Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 3 October.
Top stories
Boris Johnson has laid out a five-point Brexit offer that would take Britain, including Northern Ireland, out of the customs union, and warned the EU27 there is “very little time” to do a deal. Labour described Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals as “neither credible nor workable”, claiming his real plan was to force through a no-deal Brexit. Business leaders have told Johnson his Brexit plan risks causing severe damage to the Northern Ireland economy and has ramped up the chance of a no-deal departure. In his first speech to the Conservative party conference as UK prime minister, Johnson offered a clutch of unusual analogies.
A heavy campaign of lobbying by Australia’s banks preceded treasurer Josh Frydenberg telling financial regulators not to enforce responsible lending laws “too stringently”, Guardian Australia can reveal. Regulators have been left with whiplash by a sudden change in the tone of government remarks over the past month, from a generally tough-on-banks stance following the Hayne royal commission to a new emphasis on the “personal responsibility” of borrowers. The chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, Anna Bligh, said the peak body had lobbied widely on the issue: “Of course I have spoken to government ministers, shadow ministers, other members of parliament and regulators about the application of responsible lending laws, a significant issue of critical importance to our economy being debated across the country, from the boardroom of the Reserve Bank to local backyard barbecues,” she said.
Barnaby Joyce says the Coalition risks “political annihilation” in the bush if the drought worsens and it does not start building dams, as Labor leader Anthony Albanese lashed the government for failing to produce a national drought strategy. Albanese toured drought-affected Stanthorpe in Queensland on Wednesday, saying parts of the state were clearly suffering “natural disaster” and criticising the government for failing to build a single dam since being elected in 2013. Following controversy over Joyce’s role as special drought envoy, which Labor has criticised as a political appointment that has not delivered value for taxpayers, the former Nationals leader told Guardian Australia he agreed with Labor that the government needed to “get cracking” on dam construction.
A man has been shot dead by police in western Sydney after allegedly firing on officers with a shotgun. Police allege a vehicle stopped outside Penrith police station just after 9.30pm on Wednesday and the man approached a police vehicle with a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun and opened fire. “Police returned fire and the man suffered a fatal injury. He died at the scene,” police said in a statement early on Thursday.
World
Bernie Sanders has undergone a heart procedure and is cancelling events until further notice, according to his campaign office. Sanders, 78, a Vermont senator and a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, was hospitalised in Nevada on Tuesday night where he had two stents inserted to treat a blocked artery.
Thousands of people protested in Hong Kong on Wednesday to denounce the shooting of a teenage student by police, an escalation of force that has intensified the standoff between protesters and authorities.
Nearly 100 Sikh police officers and veterans in the US have called on law enforcement associations to create formal policies to allow officers to wear articles of faith. The appeal, in the form of a letter, came in the wake of the murder of a Sikh-American sheriff’s deputy near Houston, Texas.
250 million children worldwide are forecast to be obese by 2030. Childhood obesity is rising exponentially worldwide as the relentless marketing of junk foods reaches around the globe, according to data shared with the Guardian.
One of the UK’s longest-running legal battles has been resolved after more than 70 years, enabling descendants of an Indian princely family to collect £35m (AU$64m) from NatWest bank.
Opinion and analysis
“Instead of ‘Get Brexit done’, the Tories should really have co-opted the deathless title of that Succession episode Shit Show at the Fuck Factory,” writes Marina Hyde. “Boris Johnson’s own foreword to the conference program declared that he felt, in Manchester, ‘the same throb of possibility every time I visit’. As you’d expect from someone whose personal philosophy is ‘no throb unyielded to’. Beyond the security cordon in the real country – all those wonderful people out there in the dark – Johnson’s latest polling puts him on a minus 18 approval rating. He’s as popular as ebola on a chemo ward – and yet, he is still 42 (FORTY-TWO) points ahead of Jeremy Corbyn.”
The RBA is cutting rates because the government has abandoned responsibility for economic growth, writes Greg Jericho. “The move by the Reserve Bank to cut the cash rate to its record low of 0.75% is a clear indicator that the economy is struggling mightily and that the bank feels the government has completely abandoned its responsibility for triggering economic growth, leaving the RBA alone to try to get things going. It is worth going back to the April budget this year when the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, provided a nice little section titled ‘Strengthening the economy’ in which he announced ‘the next stage in our economic plan to make Australia even stronger’. ‘Even stronger’ is an interesting phrasing given it suggested that the economy was actually strong. It wasn’t.”
Sport
The Barrett brothers have made history as the merciless All Blacks crushed Canada 63-0 in the Rugby World Cup, writes Paul Rees with four tries in the opening 10 minutes of the second half, including one by Scott Barrett following scores by his brothers Beauden and Jordie.
AFLW hopefuls are running the gamut of emotions at the Melbourne draft combine. The tension is tangible as these potential players, all hoping to fulfil their football dreams, are put through their paces, writes Kasey Symons.
The Premier League has appointed the Guardian’s David Pemsel as its new chief executive. Pemsel, 51, has been chief executive of Guardian Media Group, the owner of the Guardian and the Observer, since July 2015.
Thinking time: ‘I emerged hours later, pruny and triumphant’
Last month, Josephine Tovey texted a friend to ask her if she wanted to start a book club. “I always baulk at the idea of book clubs because I fear it would show me up as being a bad reader,” her friend replied. “Have been on the same book for ages!!! I’m terrible!!! I scroll social media before bed, ie I am a BAD PERSON.”
“I felt seen, to say the least,” writes Tovey in her new column for Guardian Australia. “My limp attempt to start a book club was a product of similar guilt. It was early September and I had only just finished a novel I began in April. In the same amount of time the first Gulf war was almost over.
“Reading books is something I was once did compulsively, willingly and joyfully. But as I get older and spend more of my life online, reading books has become harder,” writes Tovey. The problem of reading first raised its head in 2013. “That was before the Trump presidency, before I subscribed to at least three video streaming platforms, before Twitter churned into the maelstrom it is today, before online skincare diaries, daily news podcasts, advice podcasts, Marina Hyde’s Brexit columns, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram stories and before TikTok. That app – a never-ending dervish of short, ironic videos created by teenage geniuses – is the most formidable attention blackhole yet. Its promise of atomised, instantaneous entertainment is an enticing prospect at the end of a working day.”
Media roundup
Police will today make a new appeal for information that may assist in the investigation into the death of Nicole Cartwright, who was found dead a year ago in a park in Sydney’s Hunters Hill, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The Australian leads with news that Asic “is prepared to prosecute super funds that have signed up members to worthless life insurance products”. The ABC reveals the government has launched an investigation into whether “the National Home Doctor Service ‘knowingly, recklessly or negligently’ allowed some of its doctors to engage in ‘inappropriate practice’ in relation to Medicare billing”.
Coming up
A court hearing on a request by lawyers for Brenton Tarrant, accused of the Christchurch mosque attacks, to move the trial to Auckland.
Scott Morrison will deliver a lecture on foreign policy at the Lowy Institute.
Sign up
If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
