Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 16 September.
Top stories
The NSW government is advising local councils to invoke terrorism fears to keep the location of potentially lethal flammable cladding secret from the public. A taskforce has spent two years auditing 185,000 building records to understand how widespread the cladding is. Guardian Australia has obtained an internal missive sent by the NSW government to local councils last month warning them the cladding information is “highly sensitive” and advising them the release of the documents may be contrary to the public interest. Councils were given examples of three common reasons to reject requests: the potential to affect property prices; to derail the taskforce’s work; and to create a risk of “terror” and arson.
Environmental and civil society groups have warned the government that nuclear power has “no role” in Australia. As submissions to the parliamentary inquiry on nuclear power close, a diverse collection of unions, churches, health, environmental and Indigenous groups has called on the government to rule out changing the law to allow nuclear energy in Australia. The group warned nuclear power was “a dangerous distraction from real movement on the pressing energy decisions and climate actions we need”.
A cyclist has died of head injuries after he was startled by a magpie and crashed in Wollongong. The 76-year-old man was riding on an off-road path alongside Nicholson Park at Woonona on Sunday morning when he veered off to avoid a swooping magpie, witnesses reported. He hit a fence post and was thrown to the ground, suffering serious head injuries. He was airlifted to St George hospital in a critical condition and died in the evening.
World
EU officials have rejected Boris Johnson’s claim that “a huge amount of progress” is being made in Brexit talks, as the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that time was running out.
Donald Trump came storming to the defence of Brett Kavanaugh after the publication of new allegations about the supreme court justice’s behaviour while he was a student at Yale led to renewed calls for his impeachment.
A peaceful rally in Hong Kong has descended into chaos as police fired teargas and water cannon at protesters who hurled petrol bombs, set fires and clashed with residents.
Iran has dismissed US accusations that it was responsible for a series of explosive drone attacks on the world’s largest petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia.
A new generation of autonomous weapons or “killer robots” could accidentally start a war or cause mass atrocities, a former top Google software engineer has warned.
Opinion and analysis
At the peak of the media’s fascination with Steve Bannon, one issue dominated – why does he wear two shirts at the same time? The only right answer to the question, writes Nesrine Malik, is: who cares? “The same playbook is being used with Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. Why the gilet? The tote bags? What clouds is he summoning with his powers of political atmokinesis? … Cummings will walk away from the wreckage of Brexit and another ‘compelling’ figure will take his place. The hope is that whoever replaces him will be met with cynicism and outrage, rather than fascination and hagiography.”
Australians overwhelmingly support business leaders speaking out on social and political issues, according to a new survey that conflicts with government efforts to paint such efforts as corporate kowtowing to “noisy elites”. But the survey, from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, also shows that when chief executives do speak out they are regarded as doing so out of self-interest. The survey of 3,000 Australians and 59 bosses showed 78% of the general public supported corporate leaders speaking out on issues of public importance but 52% thought that when they were did they were talking in the interests of their own company.
Sport
England have won the fifth Test to draw the Ashes series but Australia keep the urn. The home side won by 135 runs at the Oval after finally dismissing Steve Smith for a modest score, 23, despite Matthew Wade’s pugnacious century.
The opening round of the NRL finals was full of incident and upsets, writes Matt Cleary. The upshot is minor premiers Melbourne Storm now face an uphill task to reach a fourth consecutive grand final.
Thinking time: ‘Now, finally, there was a fight’
“Whenever I try to understand how the past two decades happened, I return to that September – to that ground-zero day and its immediate aftermath,” writes Edward Snowden in an extract from his memoir. “To return means coming up against a truth darker than the lies that tied the Taliban to al-Qaeda and conjured up Saddam Hussein’s illusory stockpile of WMDs. It means, ultimately, confronting the fact that the carnage and abuses that marked my young adulthood were born not only in the executive branch and the intelligence agencies, but also in the hearts and minds of all Americans, myself included.” After the attack, he writes, nearly 100,000 spies returned to work with the knowledge that they had failed at their one and only job, which was protecting the US.
“The day after September 11 was the first day of a new era, which the US faced with a unified resolve, strengthened by a revived sense of patriotism and the goodwill and sympathy of the world. In retrospect, my country could have done so much with this opportunity. It could have treated terror not as the theological phenomenon it purported to be, but as the crime it was. It could have used this rare moment of solidarity to reinforce democratic values and cultivate resilience in the now-connected global public. Instead, it went to war.”
Media roundup
The ABC reveals that disability advocates are threatening to boycott the upcoming royal commission over perceived conflicts of interest. The Sydney Morning Herald says some Sydney residents are being charged 13 times more than others for council service fees. And the Australian has a different take on businesses speaking out on social issues, reporting that “the Business Council of Australia wants CEOs to abandon virtue signalling and focus on the core aims of business”.
Coming up
Parliament resumes with Scott Morrison set to face pressure over the Victorian MP Gladys Liu’s alleged links to Chinese government-backed organisations.
Voting on candidates for the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria opens.
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