Good morning. The French president has accused Australian prime minister Scott Morrison of lying over a major submarine contract. Australia’s carbon neutrality plan is under fire for its over reliance on carbon removal technology. And the Qantas soundtrack is back.
Emmanuel Macron has accused the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, of lying to him over an abandoned $90bn submarine contract, in a significant escalation of tensions between Paris and Canberra. The French president levelled the accusation to journalists on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome. Meanwhile, Alok Sharma, president of the Cop26 climate summit, has called on global leaders to “banish ghosts of the past” and step up with new pledges to lower emissions as the world is running out of time to keep warming below 1.5C. As leaders prepared to fly in for the conference in Glasgow, Sharma could not say with certainty that the two-week event would end with a deal to keep that prospect alive.
Morrison’s government has been warned its plan for carbon neutrality by 2050 will fail if it is solely reliant on investing in new technology. The Grattan Institute’s Towards Net Zero report, released today, has suggested the Australian government would need to pull many other policy levers to reach net zero, including vehicle emissions standards, energy efficiency obligations and rules on use of carbon credits.
The Australian defence force has tightened its vetting procedures in a bid to prevent nationalist and racist violent extremists from joining. The measures, which include better information sharing with the intelligence agency Asio, are driven by concerns that extremists have sought to join the ADF “to obtain training and capability”. A defence spokesperson told Guardian Australia questions are asked “to determine whether someone is a ‘fit and proper person’ to serve, which includes a national criminal check and psychological screening of all candidates”.
Australia
Australia will reopen quarantine-free travel entry to fully vaccinated Singaporeans from 21 November. The new travel agreement follows a meeting between Morrison and the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Rome on Sunday.
Even before Covid, many Australian junior doctors suffered as a result of long hours and stress. But the pandemic has made it for worse for them.
When Covid forced the world to stop, planes were herded into enormous storage areas across the United States, Europe, and just outside of Alice Springs, Australia. And now it’s time to rip off the plastic, power up the engines, and prepare for takeoff once more.
The world
A dispute between the UK and France over post-Brexit fishing rights has escalated significantly after a meeting between Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, with Downing Street rejecting a French claim that the two leaders had agreed a path towards resolving the issue.
Dozens of clinics, private hospitals and pharmacies in the UK are offering controversial hymen repair surgery, an undercover investigation has revealed, as the government moves closer to banning the harmful practice.
An international aid worker for Médecins Sans Frontières has warned of more deaths at Poland’s border with Belarus, describing how desperate and often dangerously weakened migrants including very young children are being pushed back across the frontier.
Sudanese anti-coup protesters manned barricades in Khartoum on Sunday, on the seventh day of unrest. Tens of thousands of people turned out across the country for Saturday’s demonstration where at least three people were shot dead and more than 100 people wounded, according to medics.
Recommended reads
“The drought, the fires and the floods have nearly broken us,” writes Sophie Love, a first-generation farmer. “But the government keeps playing games on climate action.” Through drought seasons, Love and her husband have seen rivers stop flowing and heard birds go silent. “There’s a human cost to climate change,” Love writes. “It has a worn face – lined from squinting into sunshine and runnelled with grief from weary eyes.”
After a decade embroiled in public controversies, Clementine Ford, one of Australia’s most high-profile feminists is exposing a softer side with her new book, How We Love. “People always assume that I’m coming from a place of anger and hate,” says Ford. “As much as I am quite impervious, now, to people’s opinions of me, I also feel the same human instinct and need to be understood.”
“Time can bring you down,” Adnan Choopani sings, his words echoing off the walls of the detention centre compound. Time is something Adnan, and his cousin Mehdi, know only too well. For eight years they have been held by Australia’s immigration detention regime, offshore and on. They have watched friends burn themselves to death and known the despair that has led them to contemplate suicide themselves. They have been beaten and abused, jailed without reason. “Time,” Adnan sings, “can bend your knees.”
Listen
As more Australians get vaccinated against Covid-19, pharmaceutical companies and researchers are already turning their focus towards what many believe will be the next big public health crisis – superbugs, or antimicrobial resistance. Described by the CSIRO as “the biggest human health threat, bar none”, a recent discovery by a team of Australian researchers has brought hope to the fight against superbugs.
Today on Full Story, science writer Donna Lu talks to Laura Murphy-Oates about superbugs and the risk they pose to human health.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Alan Davidson, pioneering left-arm fast bowler in the age of Richie Benaud, died of natural causes aged 92 on Saturday morning. He followed Ashley Mallett, the leading off-spinner from Ian Chappell’s time, who died the previous evening of cancer aged 72.
As the Tokyo Paralympic Games drew to a close, Morrison announced the federal government would give equal prize money for Olympic and Paralympic medallists. After 61 years of Australian participation at the Paralympic Games, Jaryd Clifford, an Australian Paralympian wondered if lawmakers were finally recognising the contributions people with disability make in Australia. “Perhaps, but I’m not so sure,” he says. Clifford writes about Australia’s historical failure to protect the most fundamental human rights of people with disabilities and why they shouldn’t have to be exceptional in order to be accepted.
Media roundup
Adults who have been fully vaccinated for at least six months will be eligible to receive a booster shot in NSW from Monday, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, as international and regional travel begins. Western Australian premier Mark McGowan says booster shots will also be available in his state on Monday, the West Australian reports.
Coming up
The former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian is due to front the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into whether she breached public trust.
The first passengers travelling without quarantine restrictions begin arriving at Sydney Airport’s T1 International Terminal from 6am.
And if you’ve read this far …
Learn about the Qantas soundtrack, two 15-minute orchestrated pieces heard perhaps millions of times by travellers boarding and disembarking Australia’s national carrier.
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