Good morning, this is James Murray bringing you the main stories and must-reads on 8 June 2020.
Top stories
Mathias Cormann has been told to listen to First Nations people after describing Australian Black Lives Matter protests as reckless, selfish and self-indulgent. The finance minister attacked protesters demanding an end to Indigenous deaths in custody, saying they posed an unacceptable risk to the community due to Covid-19. The shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said it was the responsibility of elected leaders to “listen to the cries” of people protesting against institutional racism and deaths in custody. Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, has warned that protests could generate a new cluster of Covid-19 infections and urged participants to get tested if they developed any symptoms. Kelly said: “Black lives do matter, all lives matter. I absolutely understand the depth of feeling.” Meanwhile, the US attorney general, William Barr, has denied that US police are systemically racist.
A 14-year-old boy who was allegedly driving a stolen vehicle that crashed, killing four other teenagers, in suburban Townsville has been charged. Two girls and two boys, believed to be aged between 14 and 18, died at the scene early on Sunday morning. Police say the car was on the wrong side of the road when it clipped a roundabout, rolled and struck a light pole. “At no stage did the police pursue that vehicle or try to intercept that vehicle,” Superintendent Assistant District Officer Glen Pointing told reporters.
Labor says the government’s homebuilder scheme and other coronavirus stimulus measures need greater scrutiny by parliament. Last week the government announced it would fund grants worth $25,000 for eligible singles and couples planning to build or renovate homes between June and the end of December, with the uncapped program estimated to cost taxpayers $688m. Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, said: “Parliament should be having a say in the way in which stimulus is rolled out.” Civil society groups have argued that the $688m would have been better spent building social housing. A professional services firm, Ernst & Young, has found that stimulus programs backing clean energy would create nearly three times as many jobs for every dollar spent on fossil fuel developments.
Australia
Tony Abbott, Marcia Langton and Michael Clarke are among the Australians recognised in the Queen’s birthday honours. Abbott was made a Companion of the Order of Australia due to “significant contributions to trade, border control, and to the Indigenous community”.
Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, says Australia must help Hong Kong residents who are living in fear of China’s security crackdown. Marles told the ABC on Sunday if the UK put out a call for assistance, “I actually think that that is a call that we need to take very seriously”. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has asked Australia and other partners to consider “burden-sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong”.
Hundreds of private images of Australian female journalists and celebrities have been posted without consent on a sexist internet forum. Female journalists say they feel “violated” by the forum, which has been posting personal images and lewd comments about women in the Australian media industry for more than a decade. .
The world
Black Lives Matter protesters in the UK city of Bristol have toppled a statue of a slave trader, Edward Colston. The 18ft bronze statue, erected in 1895, has long been a focal point for anger about the city’s role in the slave trade.
The German suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been linked to the disappearance of two more children. The father of a six-year-old German boy who vanished in Portugal in 1996 now hopes to finally learn what happened to his son.
Brazil’s far-right government has stopped releasing coronavirus data and wiped an official site clean of swaths of data. Health ministry insiders said the president, Jair Bolsonaro, ordered the move, which was met with widespread outrage.
The omission of the effects of air pollution and race on a review of Covid-19 by Public Health England has been described as “astonishing”. Minorities are known to experience higher levels of air pollution, and there is growing evidence linking exposure to dirty air to increased coronavirus infections and deaths.
Recommended reads
James Clark is the owner, editor, journalist, photographer and advertising salesman of the outback newspaper the Warrego Watchman. “When you sit down to write the stories, you feel the locals peering over your shoulder,” he says of his work at a newspaper that informs the town of Cunnamulla, Queensland, population 1,140. Clark says he writes 20 stories a week, earning less than a cadet reporter, but refuses to shut down his printing press. With News Corp closing more than 100 regional titles, the Watchman now covers an area larger than the UK – it’s the only local paper for 500km in any direction. “I just do feel duty-bound to keep it going because there’d be nobody out here doing those stories,” Clark said. “The day I chuck it in and decide to go and get a real job, no one is going to be keeping an eye on these places.”.
Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, argues that Australia does not need to import divisive leadership strategies from overseas. Murphy says Scott Morrison has risen to the occasion in bringing the country together to tackle Covid-19, but comments by Mathias Cormann criticising Black Lives Matter protesters showed “the government was back in the combat business”. “Cormann did not have to pit well-meaning Australians against one another to suggest some forms of personal anguish were more legitimate than others, but he chose to do that … The finance minister could have chosen displeasure, or disappointment, as his response. But instead, he chose conflict.”
And if you have ever wondered about becoming a foster parent to cats, live vicariously through Tom Hawking, who has had 30 cats in 18 months. Returning to Melbourne from New York for a short stint, and missing their cat, Hawking and his partner were encouraged to take up cat fostering. Hawking made contact with Maneki Neko, a volunteer-run organisation that operates a cat cafe and a rescue program. “I sent an email and a couple of days later, I was driving back across Melbourne with a carrier containing two scruffy little 12-week-old kittens.”
Listen
One of the sectors worst hit by the pandemic is our universities, where 21,000 jobs are on the line. With international students representing more than a quarter of all students and paying high fees, what does the future look like for universities? In today’s Full Story podcast, we examine the value of these jobs by talking to one of the people to lose university work.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
NRL games this weekend saw the Newcastle Knights beat the Canberra Raiders and the Gold Coast Titans overcome the Wests Tigers. Kalyn Ponga and Bradman Best helped the Knights shock Canberra 34-18 at Campbelltown.
Media roundup
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Tony Abbott believes the cuts his government made paved the way for the current Covid-19 response. The ABC wraps up the Claremont serial killings trial, which resumes today after a four-week break. And the Age reports that family violence has soared in lockdown.
Coming up
Anthony Mundine and other fighters will stage a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest at Sydney Opera House.
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