Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 26 March.
Top stories
Labor remains ahead of the Morrison government 52% to 48% on the two-party-preferred measure in the Guardian Essential poll. A majority of the sample (69%) believed social media platforms should be forced to ensure violent material is not broadcast through their sites, with strong support for that across all voting groups – and 63% agreed with the statement white extremism is every bit as dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism, again with strong agreement among Labor, Coalition and Greens voters. Just under half the sample, 49%, believed that television networks and mainstream media outlets that have provided platforms for people with extreme and racist views need to bear some responsibility for the attack and just under half the sample (42%) agreed with the statement “politicians from Australia’s major parties have deliberately stirred up anti-Islamic sentiment as a way of getting votes”.
Koala populations on Australia’s east coast have diminished to the extent the species should now be considered “endangered”, environment groups have said. In south-east Queensland, once a stronghold for koala populations, habitat continues to be bulldozed through ineffective offset strategies, loopholes in development restrictions and poor planning for population growth, the groups said. From 1990 to 2016, at least 9.6m hectares of koala habitat was bulldozed in Queensland and New South Wales. WWF-Australia says it is the slow creep of small developments – which bulldoze a hectare or two at a time – rather than broadscale clearing that has put once-thriving populations and habitat under threat.
The federal vice-president of the Liberal party has delivered a train wreck performance on the ABC’s Q&A, in which she accused New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern of “copying” John Howard’s gun laws. Teena McQueen also had to be warned by host Tony Jones about potentially “defamatory” remarks about Greens leader Richard Di Natale. American writer Roxane Gay said Ardern “did the right political thing by, within six days, banning semiautomatic weapons”. McQueen interjected and said “we did that years ago. The Liberal party did that years ago with John Howard”, to groans from the audience. McQueen dominated the program, repeatedly interrupting co-panellists on subjects including racism and white extremism.
World
Donald Trump is set to co-opt the special counsel’s finding of no collusion with Russia in his bid for re-election, turning vindication into vengeance with an assault on Democrats and the media. Here’s what we learned from William Barr’s summary of the report, and here’s what we know about Barr – no stranger to playing Republican spear-catcher. Russia, meanwhile, says the report “proved what we already knew”.
Israel’s military says it has begun striking “Hamas terror targets” across the Gaza Strip, retaliating for an earlier rocket attack that wounded seven people in a neighbourhood north of Tel Aviv.
Students of Parkland, a Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last year, are mourning the deaths of what they consider two more victims of the tragedy – teenagers who apparently died in suicides one week apart.
Michael Avenatti, the former lawyer for Stormy Daniels, has been indicted on extortion charges and arrested. According to a criminal complaint filed by federal authorities in New York, Avenatti was charged with attempting to extort millions of dollars out of Nike.
At least two people owe their lives to Taco Bell hot sauce after near-death experiences in recent weeks. A Man in Oregon trapped in his car for five days ate hot sauce to survive, and moments after a Taco Bell customer got up from his seat to retrieve some hot sauce, a car burst through the restaurant’s wall.
Opinion and analysis
Why the silence around the scandal threatening Justin Trudeau? asks Jack Bernhardt. If you actually look at Canadian politics, and try to ignore the foreign media’s perception of Trudeau – they see him as a Calvin Klein model who’s pretty good at Sporcle quizzes – a darker picture emerges. The country is facing a huge corruption case that threatens to bring down the prime minister, the government and one of the biggest contractors in the country.
Cost is the scariest part of going to the dentist, writes Greg Jericho. “A recent Grattan Institute report estimates that in the last year over 2 million of the Australians who needed a dentist skipped a visit because of the cost. It is clear that to talk of a universal and equal healthcare without including dental health means overlooking a major aspect of our quality of life, and condemns those on lower incomes to worse health.”
An ominous red river divides the small mining town of Queenstown in the isolated west of Tasmania. The river’s colour is a result of copper run-off from a closed mine and is an ever-present reminder of the town’s history of environmental and industrial disaster. Where the River Runs Red explores a community in an economically crippled area caught between the past and a future that is less reliant on a mining economy.
Sport
Romeo and Juliet had an easier time getting together than Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury have experienced lately, writes Kevin Mitchell. The courting of the voluble Gypsy King as the perfect ticket-selling foil for the sweet-talking triple-belt world heavyweight champion continues behind the scenes.
As fog blankets the pitch on a Monday evening training session, a group of Under-12 academy footballers strive to generate sharp passes, quick feet, clever movement. Everybody looks the part. This particular everybody, though, is not your standard issue elite group, writes Amy Lawrence. Among the boys are Maddy and Laila, two exceptional prospects from the Arsenal girls’ team.
Thinking time: who keeps buying California’s scarce water?
Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town’s 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop. Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows – but not cows in California’s Central Valley or Montana’s rangelands. Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia.
The storehouses belong to Fondomonte Farms, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based company Almarai – one of the largest food production companies in the world. Each month, Fondomonte Farms loads the alfalfa on to hulking metal shipping containers destined to arrive at a massive port just outside King Abdullah City in Saudi Arabia. With the landscape there being mostly desert, and alfalfa being a water-intensive crop, growing it has always been expensive and draining on scarce water resources, to the point that the Saudi government finally outlawed the practice in 2016. In the wake of the ban, Almarai decided to purchase land wherever it is cheap and has favourable water conditions to produce enough feed for its 93,000 cows.
Media roundup
The ABC reports that secret recordings show One Nation sought millions of dollars in political donations from America’s National Rifle Association. The Age reveals that when Scott Morrison was immigration minister, he proposed a $9bn-$10bn program building mass detention facilities in Australia for asylum seekers already in the country on bridging visas. A fall in markets over concerns about global economic growth and a fall in 10-year US Treasury yields to one-year lows mean the ASX will open lower this morning, for the second straight session, according to the Australian Financial Review. This follows Australia’s 10-year bond rate tumbling to a historic low of 1.76%.
Coming up
The Wilderness Society is taking the federal government to court over its decision to approve a luxury tourism development at Lake Malbena in Tasmania’s remote north.
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