Good morning! It’s Tamara Howie here on Tuesday 2 February getting ready for the first day of parliamentary sittings for the year and fallout from the report into Collingwood’s structural racism. Overnight we’ve seen a military coup threaten democracy in Myanmar and Trump still scrambling for a defence team ahead of his impeachment trial.
Top stories
Scott Morrison has told the National Press Club that MP Craig Kelly is “not my doctor, and he’s not yours” to evade questions and calls to rebuke the MP for spreading misinformation about Covid treatments and vaccines. In his address ahead of parliamentary sittings, Morrison was questioned on whether a $24m public information campaign to build confidence in the Covid vaccine was a waste of taxpayer cash if his own MPs were publishing false claims on social media. Despite the misinformation, the government’s vaccine program has support from the public, according to the latest Guardian Essential Poll, with 68% confident that it will be done efficiently and 72% confident it will be done safely. The vaccine program provides a light at the end of the tunnel of potential future snap lockdowns, such as the one that’s shocked WA residents out of complacency and into a panic and prompted two new reviews into the state’s hotel quarantine system.
Donald Trump is still scrambling to put together a new defence team in time for his impeachment trial. He has announced two new lawyers – one a Fox News commentator and former counsel to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the other a former county prosecutor who opposed charging Bill Cosby with sexual assault – after a five-person team abruptly quit their roles. Trump has until noon on Tuesday to reply to a charge of incitement of insurrection. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been urged to stand firm on his party’s Covid relief package when he meets with a group of Republican senators today. The Republican senators have proposed a $600bn package, which is more than $1tn less than Biden called for.
Myanmar’s military has taken power in a coup and declared a state of emergency, hours after detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior figures from the ruling party. A statement attributed to Aung San Suu Kyi said the military was trying to reimpose a dictatorship. “I urge people not to accept this, to respond and wholeheartedly to protest against the coup by the military,” the statement said. Military television said the army had taken control of the country for one year, and the army had detained senior government leaders in response to “fraud” during last year’s general election. The coup has been condemned by the US, where President Joe Biden threatened sanctions, but simply “noted” by China. Locals have been left without communications and are rushing to stock up on supplies.
Australia
Human activity is forcing animals to move further to live, hunt and forage, according to a new study. Hunting and recreation activities had a greater impact than logging and urbanisation and the changes “point to a global restructuring of animal movement” that could have profound knock-on effects.
A Labor media blitz has targeted Coalition MPs over “Trumpian” gagging tactics. Tailored media releases attempt to tar the MPs for being “part of a government obsessed with shutting down democratic debate and silencing its opponents”. The opposition has contacted hundreds of media organisations in 22 Liberal and National-held seats to highlight the incumbent members’ voting records, arguing MPs have been more active in silencing the opposition than passing bills.
Federal government funding for private schools is growing at a faster rate than public schools. The Productivity Commission says spending on private students rose 3.3% a year over the decade compared with 1.4% for the public, and there is a bleak outlook for school leavers, with fewer finding work due to the pandemic.
The world
Video has been released showing a New York police officer pepper-spraying a handcuffed nine-year-old girl. Police in Rochester, New York, have come under renewed criticism after the body-camera footage shows the girl in the back of a police car crying and shouting “I want my dad” before being sprayed.
Russian state prosecutors are poised to jail the opposition leader Alexei Navalny for three-and-a-half years. Vladimir Putin’s press spokesperson said Moscow would ignore statements from the Biden administration, following Sunday’s mass pro-Navalny protests, which saw 5,300 people detained.
The world needs to kick its coal habit to start a green recovery, says energy watchdog’s Fatih Birol. The International Energy Agency says the shift away from coal in key regions, including China and India, needs to be made a global priority.
Recommended reads
“Whenever I meet someone else who grew up disabled in Australia, there’s only one key thing I want to know about them – Hey, did you have to ride horses too?” says Alistair Baldwin. In this extract from Growing Up Disabled in Australia, Baldwin recounts how hippotherapy – therapeutic horse riding – offered much more than medical treatment. “At school, all my friends were abled (as were my enemies). I put so much effort into trying to hide the gap between our abilities. In horse riding, I never had to disguise the odd way my shoulders rounded, my strange gait, the weird way my hands grasped things. The spaces and moments in which you can relax into how your body truly is are sacred.”
Australia needs to stop thinking that setting a target of zero emissions by 2050 is good enough, writes Greg Jericho. Political parties need to explain what is being done with Australia’s carbon budget to ensure targets are realistic. “Think of it like a bank account. Imagine you have $61,610 dollars to last you for 30 weeks. That works out at $2,053 dollars to spend a week. But what if you spend $48,880 in the first 10 weeks? Oops. You just used up 79% of your budget in a third of the time. This is what we are projected to do with our carbon budget.”
A mordant humour is never far from the surface in The End, a series that pivots boldly but not insensitively on the issue of assisted dying, writes Luke Buckmaster. The witty drama from director Jessica M Thompson walks the tightrope between the morbid and the absurd with “magically weird moments” that “leave you wondering – in the best kind of way – what the hell did I just watch?”
Listen
When Joe Biden entered the Oval Office as president, he got to work trying to figure out how to mitigate the coronavirus situation in the US. In this episode from the Guardian’s Politics Weekly, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Pulitzer prizewinning author and journalist Laurie Garrett about what Biden needs to do to get a grip on the Covid crisis.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
For many Collingwood fans, the club’s “structural racism”, which was uncovered on Monday, is a source of great shame. Antoun Issa, a died-in-the-wool Pies fan, had already given up his membership before the findings of the Do Better report were revealed, and Eddie McGuire’s prickly media conference performance did nothing to change his stance.
Two AFLW matches have been postponed due to an outbreak of Covid-19 and Western Australia’s subsequent lockdown. And with memories fresh of the incredible effort put into keeping the men’s season functioning, all eyes are on the AFL to see how it responds to this latest challenge to the women’s game.
Media roundup
Queensland’s leading police officers have called for youth offenders on bail to be fitted with GPS locators ($) and criticised parents, saying police are being used as “babysitters”, says the Courier Mail. The Australian reports the WA government may have breached pandemic protocols by taking more than 11 hours ($) to alert the commonwealth and other states to a community Covid transmission. Meanwhile, a man is behind bars for 18 days for allegedly refusing to wear a mask in WA’s first day of lockdown ($), according to the West Australian.
Coming up
Federal parliament will sit for the first time in 2021 and former Wallabies rugby union player David Pocock will be among the speakers at a climate rally outside Parliament House.
The Reserve Bank will make its first decision of the year affecting interest rates.
And if you’ve read this far …
Fake Fabergé are causing a stir at a Russian museum, which has been asked to close a Fabergé exhibition after a prominent expert said it contains at least 20 fakes.
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