Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 3 April.
Top stories
Labor has homed in on the centrepiece of the Morrison government’s budget, declaring the Coalition’s proposed tax rebate for workers on low and middle incomes gives a smaller tax cut to 2 million Australians earning less than $40,000. Pointing to the direction of Thursday’s budget reply from Bill Shorten, the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said the government’s proposal was less generous to workers on incomes below $40,000 than Labor’s offering. Foreign aid, meanwhile, continues to be one of the losers of the federal budget, with projected falls of more than 11% over coming years, and a change in emphasis from Asia to the Pacific. The head of Australia’s peak foreign aid body, Marc Purcell, has warned Australia risks becoming irrelevant in the Asian region, with other donors such as China taking its place.
Theresa May is to ask for another brief Brexit extension as a means of seeking a compromise withdrawal plan with the Labour party, she has announced, heralding the likelihood of Downing Street backing a softer Brexit. Meanwhile, Michel Barnier has said a no-deal Brexit is “very likely” and becoming more likely by the day after the Commons rejected all the alternative solutions to Theresa May’s deal. The comments from the EU’s chief negotiator were echoed by the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The federal government has announced it will close the Christmas Island detention centre, just weeks after reopening it at a cost of more than $185m. Not a single refugee or asylum seeker has been transferred there. The government reopened the detention centre in reaction to the passing of the medical evacuation bill, which was designed to ensure refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru could be evacuated to Australia for treatment if required. Tuesday’s budget reiterated the government’s intention to repeal the bill, and also revealed the centre would close before 1 July.
World
The Republican mayor of El Paso, the largest American city on the US border with Mexico, has warned Donald Trump that shutting the Mexico border would “cripple” the city. If he goes ahead this week with his threat to close the border it would have a “detrimental, almost draconian” impact on the entire region, said the mayor, Dee Margo: “It would be a critical killer to us, frankly”.
Official results in local elections in Turkey have been pushed back until next week, delaying results that appear to have delivered a blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s dominance, as the ruling Justice and Development party said it had decided to lodge objections in Istanbul’s neck-and-neck mayoral race.
Bernie Sanders has raised $18.2m in the 41 days since he launched his Democratic presidential 2020 election bid, his campaign announced on Tuesday. The Vermont senator is expected to post the largest early fundraising haul of more than a dozen candidates who have entered the crowded Democratic field so far.
Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.
Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, a landmark government report has found, warning that drastic action is the only way to avoid catastrophic outcomes.
Opinion and analysis
“With the up-front tax relief promised in Tuesday night’s budget, the prime minister is reaching out to workers – principally workers on taxable incomes of $90,000 and below, making them winners in the hope that he won’t be a loser,” writes Katharine Murphy. “The Coalition needs to convince voters currently inclined to lodge a protest vote not to do that. To achieve this, Morrison first has to recognise you exist, and then feel your pain. Your mortgage stress. Your power bills. Your frustration at being stuck in traffic (new commuter car park anyone?).” Meanwhile, writes Martin Farrer, “Josh Frydenberg’s headline-grabbing claim that the budget will return to surplus in the current financial year and deliver successive surpluses in the next four years is based on a rosy outlook for the economy.”
“The closer the Brexit doomsday clock ticks to midnight, the more of a certain type of machismo we get,” writes Marina Hyde. “I find it extremely encouraging. It suggests that if and when all else fails, the Brexit ultras can either fight or fuck their way out of this. Happily, not one of them feels miscast in this hypersexualised action hero role. ‘How are you feeling tonight?’ Sky News inquired of Steve Baker, who last week was wishing he could tear down parliament and bulldoze it into the Thames. ‘Well, everyone knows I’m Brexit hardman Steve Baker,’ came the reply from the man everyone knows needed a cuddle off Jacob Rees-Mogg after the aforementioned ’dozer speech.”
Sport
In an extract from his book on Donald Trump and golf, Rick Reilly explains why the president’s game can tell us more about him than a roomful of psychologists. “Donald’s Trump’s boast about winning 18 club championships is a lie that’s so over-the-top Crazytown it loses all credibility among golfers the second it’s out of his mouth,” he writes. “To double check, I called the only guy who could come close: George “Buddy” Marucci, of Philadelphia.”
Football Association chairman Greg Clarke has called for Uefa to make it easier for referees to halt or abandon matches when they hear supporters shouting racist abuse. Speaking at the Equal Game conference at Wembley, Clarke said: “The young men and women who take to the field representing our clubs and countries not only deserve but should be entitled to play their football in a safe environment entirely free from racial abuse. There should be no judgment call on whether something is of a strong magnitude. Racism is racism.”
Thinking time: Big Father
Christians Like Us is a two-part series in which 10 different kinds of Christian live together, Big Brother-style, tackling the big issues facing their religion: homophobia, sexism and clerical child abuse. Luke Buckmaster watched the SBS show, and writes: “Christians will engage with the program because it explores matters pertinent to believers without talking down to them. However, I reckon atheists partial to a bit of schadenfreude will get a kick out of it too – simply because it’s full of shots of Christians looking uncomfortable.
“You could view these inevitable altercations from the obvious perspective: that the participants have been placed in a situation where conflict is par for the course, the producers intent on manufacturing drama. That is true, but in this context it is not necessarily wrong or deceitful. Issues the participants debate have long been hotbeds of contention inside the church and out, attracting no small measure of heartache and hand-wringing.
“Heroes, in a sense, stand out, in the form of Chris, a young gay man who left the church but remains a Christian, and Steve, a former youth worker who was sexually abused by an Anglican priest as a child, and is now contemplating matters of faith again.”
Media roundup
It’s post-budget day all the way for the Australian, which is depicting Frydenberg as cupid in a cartoon on its cover, the Sydney Morning Herald, whose analysis declares the budget to be “doing all the right things for the wrong reasons“, the NT News (Kaka Duds), and the Herald Sun, with a memorable cartoon of a punting PM. The Australian Financial Review dubs the budget as one “for the political times tempered by the economic times.” Further afield, the New York Times reports that Trump has taken a step back on his healthcare overhaul, announcing that the Republican plan will appear only after the 2020 election.
Coming up
Josh Frydenberg will deliver the traditional treasurer’s post-budget speech at the National Press Club.
Zali Steggall, independent candidate for Warringah at the federal election, is among the speakers at the Smart Energy conference in Sydney.
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