Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 5 June.
Top stories
The revival of the Barnaby Joyce controversy and a messy political week for the government has benefited Labor, with the Guardian Essential poll showing the ALP ahead 54% to 46% on two-party-preferred. The jump for Labor, propelled by a four-point drop in the Coalition’s primary vote, reverses a tightening in the poll numbers in the weeks after the budget, which promised voters a $140bn income tax cut package.
The Coalition faced further difficulty last week with splits over energy policy and live sheep exports, and battled separate controversies when Michaelia Cash was subpoenaed to give evidence and Greg Hunt washed up on the front pages after an expletive-ridden tirade against a mayor. Malcolm Turnbull remains comfortably ahead as preferred prime minister, with 41% rating him as the better PM compared with 27% backing Shorten.
Doctors are hailing a remarkable breakthrough as a woman with advanced breast cancer has been cleared of the disease. Using a form of immunotherapy that harnesses the patient’s own immune system to eradicate cancer cells, a team in Maryland has successfully trialled the groundbreaking therapy. Judy Perkins from Florida has been cancer-free for two years since treatment. “My condition deteriorated a lot towards the end, and I had a tumour pressing on a nerve,” she said. “I had given up fighting.” The success has raised hopes that the therapy will work in more patients with advanced breast cancer and other cancers.
Fossil fuel companies could be left with trillions in stranded assets owing to rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies and plunging prices for renewable energy, a study has found. The research suggests a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely given the global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition. In Australia the electricity grid is changing before our eyes, writes Giles Parkinson, becoming more renewable, more decentralised, and challenging the preconceptions of many in the industry.
Consumers will be left in the dark about unscrupulous advertising of medicines and medical devices if Australia’s drug regulator implements a new complaints-handling system, public health experts have warned. An expert review has recommended the Complaints Resolution Panel and the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council be disbanded, and a single agency be formed to manage complaints. The review found this would lead to faster and more effective sanctions for regulatory violations. But medical professionals harbour serious concerns. “The regulator is piss weak,” Asst Prof Ken Harvey said. “They lean over backwards to accommodate the profession or the industry and it really isn’t helping consumers.”
At least 33 people have been killed and nearly 300 injured in the most violent eruption of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano in more than four decades. Fuego spewed an 8km stream of lava and belched a thick plume of smoke and ash that rained on to the capital and surrounding regions. Dozens of communities on the southern slopes of Fuego have been buried in a mix of mud, ash and rocks as the explosions continued for more than 16 hours. Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for.
Sport
Serena Williams is out of the French Open after withdrawing less than an hour before her fourth-round clash with Maria Sharapova, citing a pectoral injury. Elsewhere, Rafael Nadal and Simone Halep won through, while Caroline Wozniacki crashed out to 21-year-old Russian Daria Kasatkina.
The Manchester City star Yaya Touré has fired a remarkable broadside at manager Pep Guardiola on his departure from the club, accusing the Spaniard of wanting “revenge” and of being someone who “manipulates and plays a lot with your head”.
Thinking time
Five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history Edward Snowden has no regrets, despite living in exile in Russia and still being wanted by the US. In a phone interview to mark the anniversary of the day the Guardian broke the story, he recalled the day his world changed for good. “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed. The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now.”
The Reserve Bank is expected to once again keep interest rates on hold today – marking 22 months straight of the cash rate at 1.5%. But even with such low rates buying a house is much more difficult than in the late 1980s and 1990s, writes Greg Jericho, including when the standard variable mortgage rate was a staggering 17%. “So large has been the increase in house prices that rather than needing a 17% mortgage rate to chew up 47.5% of the earnings of a male full-time worker, now it would need a rate of just 8.5%.”
There was a time when photo booths were a fixture in every train station in Australia. The dawn of the digital era has made them largely obsolete but we caught up with the owner of the machine in Flinders Street station in Melbourne, which is so well-loved that it has been given a reprieve by planners. In a charming picture essay, Alan Adler tells of how he owned more booths than he could remember during the heyday of a business that had many complications but produced pictures of “warmth and character”.
What’s he done now?
Celebrating his 500th day in office, Donald Trump has named several of his key achievements on Twitter, as well as continuing his tirades against “unfair trade” and Robert Mueller. The president has also called for Samantha Bee to be sacked for her “horrible language” used to describe Ivanka Trump, which, as Chitra Ramaswany writes, is remarkably brazen for a man who once bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy”.
Media roundup
One of three brothers accused of plotting to bomb an Etihad Airways flight out of Sydney confessed to planning to plant twin devices to go off over the Blue Mountains, the Herald Sun and other News Corp papers report. The Age says the alleged perpetrator of an attack in Melbourne’s Bourke Street last year could have been arrested by an elite police unit nine hours earlier but for “indecision”. And a joint investigation by Fairfax and the ABC reveals that up to 173 Mortgage Choice franchisees could take legal action against unfair conditions leading to “financial ruin” and “depression”.
Coming up
Australia’s first bill for a treaty with traditional land owners will be debated in the Victorian parliament.
Malcolm Turnbull continues his tour of drought-stricken regions of Queensland and NSW, while Bill Shorten will visit the Tasmanian seat of Braddon as he campaigns for Labor to retain the electorate in next month’s byelection.
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