Good morning, this is Imogen Dewey bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 7 December.
Top stories
A China boycott will hit Australian wine harder than expected as fruit and vegetable prices rise, concludes the commodities report released today by the Department of Agriculture. Trade tensions are a “dark spot” in an otherwise recovering industry – our exposed commodity markets worth $19bn, by some estimates, with services worth a further $28bn of exports. Australia may be able to divert a “limited amount” of wine to allies in the UK and the US, but China’s tariffs will probably reduce the value of exports. The Abares report also warns that prices of summer vegetables, stone fruit, apples, pears and table grapes are forecast to rise by between 15% and 25%, due to Covid-19 travel restrictions limiting labour available for harvesting.
A devastating new report says almost 3 billion animals were affected in the 2019-20 Australian bushfires, one of the “worst wildlife disasters in modern history”. The report, commissioned by WWF-Australia, includes 11 recommendations that call for better understanding of the impacts of bushfires, more research into species, and better management of other threats. The burned areas covered 12.6m hectares – an area almost the size of England. In the path of the flames lived some 181 million birds, 2.46 billion reptiles (including 51 million frogs) and 143 million mammals – including 61,000 koalas. Australia has a moral and ecological responsibility to save these animals and protect their habitats, one scientist stressed, because the vast majority exist nowhere else on Earth.
The Coalition is proposing to retrospectively strip misclassified casual workers of up to $39bn in claims, with an industrial relations bill that attorney general Christian Porter will release today. It introduces a definition of casual employment and improved rights to request permanent work after 12 months. But the bill also states that if a court finds employees were owed the entitlements of a permanent worker, casual loading already paid will count towards this liability (which happens to address a case currently on appeal to the high court.) Unions have already rejected the proposal, arguing it will allow employers to continue hiring people as casuals despite them performing ongoing permanent work, and employees would be powerless to dispute refusals to convert.
Australia
A NSW police error was to blame for two German travellers flying from Sydney to Melbourne without quarantining, an act that prompted alarm in Victoria and potentially put a planeload of 176 people at risk.
Victoria’s Covid-19 restrictions, meanwhile, significantly eased after midnight. The state yesterday marked 37 straight days free of the virus. Households can now receive 30 visitors a day, mask-wearing rules have relaxed, and public gatherings can be up to 100.
Labor’s Penny Wong has said foreign affairs minister Marise Payne must respond to an allegation her push for a review of the pandemic’s origins – one of the central grievances in the deteriorating relationship between Australia and China – was timed for a television announcement.
Labor has also accused the government of quietly reclassifying Australians stranded overseas, in an attempt to avoid “bad headlines” over Scott Morrison’s failure to return them by Christmas.
The world
Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
The White House press secretary has appeared to admit Donald Trump lost the presidential election, a concession the president refuses to make (to the “disgust” of one senior Republican). Trump’s health secretary has meanwhile insisted Trump has a detailed vaccine rollout plan, dismissing criticism from Joe Biden as “nonsense”.
France has hinted at a compromise with the UK over divergence from EU trade standards, though a minister repeated the threat of a French veto as troubled negotiations continued in Brussels.
The family of author Roald Dahl has apologised for his antisemitism. A statement buried deep on the author’s official website says his views caused “lasting and understandable hurt”.
Mysterious symptoms that have afflicted American diplomats stationed in Cuba are most likely to have been caused by “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”. A report on Havana syndrome commissioned by the US government did not identify the source of the energy – nor a possible culprit.
Recommended reads
“Don’t worry, we won’t fuck it up,” Netflix’s Que Minh Luu said when the announcement landed: that she’s rebooting Heartbreak High. Set in Sydney, the wildly popular 90s teen series was Australia’s answer to Degrassi, and was known for its grittiness and honesty, tackling storylines involving sex, drugs, domestic violence and racism. “We haven’t had something like that since,” said Luu. “We don’t have an Outlander. We don’t have a Normal People … What we want to do is reflect what it’s like to be a young person in Australia today.”
Wonder how a salon recycles 67 bags of hair? Australia’s hairdressers are getting serious about recycling: using clippings for compost, turning bottles into eyewear, and keeping bleach out of the drain. But where does the waste go next? And how is it being used to soak up oil spills?
“Arriving in the US from Australia during Covid was like walking through the looking glass,” writes trained epidemiologist Abby Bloom, who travelled to visit her 106-year-old mother in New York. “The US and Australia are responding to the same pandemic but you would hardly know it: in the US magical thinking and the elevation of individual freedom above the public good has squandered precious time. Australia has shown that the response to a pandemic needs to be strict. Lives and a nation’s economy hang in the balance.”
Listen
Caught in Australia’s campaign to “stop the boats” were 30,000 people who landed, only to enter a legal limbo. Guardian Australia’s eight-part series, Temporary, showcases stories from those seeking asylum in Australia. This episode of Full Story features Elaheh’s story. She had to suddenly flee Iran, not realising she might never see her family again. Now a recognised refugee in Australia with a young son, her visa’s restrictions dictate whether her son will ever meet the strong women who raised her.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Daniel Sams snared the prized Kohli wicket but got smacked for two sixes by Hardik Pandya as India claimed a thrilling final-over victory against Australia in last night’s Twenty20.
The honeymoon is over for Dave Rennie, who has become the only Wallabies coach in the professional era to win just one Test in his first calendar year in the job. After losing the Bledisloe Cup for the 18th consecutive year in a row, the Wallabies collected the wooden spoon in the Tri-Nations tournament – the first time they’ve done so with Argentina involved.
Media roundup
Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog has uncovered police failings on domestic abuse by officers, reports the Age. Scott Morrison is being urged to prioritise religious freedoms, reports the Australian. The ABC features the story of Queensland woman Ellie, who was one of at least 30 women who were tricked into having relationships with undercover officers working for London’s Metropolitan Police Service. And the Saturday Paper dove deep this weekend on “the seven-year plot to undermine the NDIS”
Coming up
Five international flights from Colombo, Doha, Hong Kong and Singapore are scheduled to arrive at Melbourne airport, marking the start of the state’s revamped hotel quarantine program.
A Newcastle jury has so far failed to reach unanimous verdicts in former NRL star Jarryd Hayne’s rape trial and been given more time to re-examine matters they disagree on.
And if you’ve read this far …
How do you farewell a year like 2020? By screaming vulgar profanities until it goes away? By pretending it never happened at all? Either way, we’re going to need a playlist. Guardian Australia is asking readers to nominate the best song to play when 11.59pm ticks over on New Year’s Eve – a song that represents the year we’ve had, the year we’re hoping for, or simply the way we’ll feel at midnight. We’ll compile them into a poll, ask you to vote for the one that sums it up best, then release our ultimate playlist to farewell this garbage year.
To get you started we’ve nominated our own. Join us in the comments until Friday 11 December; we’ll launch the final poll next Monday.
Sign up
If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
