Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 16 August.
Top stories
The Queensland Council of Unions has called on the Palaszczuk government to criminalise “rampant” wage theft. Lawyers Maurice Blackburn propose a tiered system of criminal penalties, with terms of up to 10 years’ jail for the most reckless or deliberate incidents. Leading employer and industry groups reject the need to criminalise wage underpayments. The Australian Industry Group suggests the term wage theft “risks inappropriately branding employers who mistakenly underpay their employees as criminals”.
Workers from the security, retail, hospitality and disability services sectors will give evidence at the hearings, which start today. Small-business owners will detail concerns about unscrupulous competitors circumventing wage obligations through the use of subcontracting arrangements.
Furious ministers from Italy’s coalition government have rounded on the company that manages the country’s motorways, as authorities struggled to quell growing anger over the bridge collapse in Genoa on Tuesday, that killed at least 39 people. A vast span of the Morandi bridge caved in during a heavy rainstorm in the northern port city, sending cars and trucks plunging on to the railway tracks below. A 12-month state of emergency has been declared in the region. The tragedy has focused anger on the structural problems that have dogged the decades-old bridge, and on Autostrade per l’Italia, the company in charge of operating and maintaining swathes of the country’s motorways. In a scathing attack, Danilo Toninelli, the transport minister from the Five Star Movement party, called for top managers at Autostrade to resign and launched an attempt to revoke the company’s contract and impose a €150m ($210m) fine.
Labor’s shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, has said it “defies logic” that a $443.8m grant could be awarded without a tender process, with the transfer of funds reportedly costing the public purse $11m in debt interest. A Senate enquiry has agreed to hold two more days of hearings next month into how the grant was awarded, with Bowen adamant that either the treasurer, Scott Morrison, or the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, should also face scrutiny. “It’s hard to believe that the treasurer or finance minister were absent at the meeting that saw $440m handed over without any sort of competitive or tender process beforehand,” Bowen said.
A bill to legalise euthanasia in Australia’s territories has narrowly been defeated in the Senate, after key crossbench supporters changed their position. Former One Nation senator Brian Burston and current One Nation senator Peter Georgiou voted against party leader Pauline Hanson on a bill drafted by David Leyonhjelm, that had received the backing of the Greens, the majority of Labor senators and some Coalition senators, as well as the majority of the crossbench. Georgiou expressed concern over the lack of “safeguards”. Liberal senator Eric Abetz declared that the “clear vote in the Senate will settle this matter for a generation”.
Scientists have identified a planet with a surface temperature two-thirds as hot as our sun, in a discovery that’s challenging many of the assumed notions surrounding planets. Reaching temperatures of 4,000C and with an atmosphere of vaporised iron and titanium, Kelt-9b, sits 650 light years away from earth in the constellation of Cygnus. Kevin Heng, a professor who led the latest work, said: “The temperatures are so insane that even though it is a planet it has the atmosphere of a star. The main lesson that exoplanets are teaching us is that we can’t just look in the solar system,” Heng added. “There are really weird things out there.”
Sport
Manchester City’s Premier League defence could be off to a rocky start, with news star midfielder Kevin De Bruyne appears set for several months on the sideline with a potentially serious knee injury. “We do not know the severity of the situation yet, and until all the examinations are complete we cannot comment,” a spokesman for City said.
Serena Williams has crashed out in back-to-back first or second round exits, as the 23-time major winner’s build up to the US Open threatens to derail following a 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 loss to Petra Kvitova in Cincinnati. “You know, this is a long comeback,” Williams said. “I’m getting there, and I’m going to just continue to work hard, and hopefully, I’ll start winning more matches.”
Thinking time
When the world itself is a meme, how do you satirise such a dark and self-satirising political culture? Ahead of the fifth and final season of Rake, Guardian Australia talks with cocreator and star Richard Roxburgh. And while Cleaver Greene faces his usual mixes of personal dramas, his entry into politics, with celebrity-buffoon politicians, corrupt banks, sexting scandals and swift decapitations of sitting prime ministers still struggles to keep up with the reality of contemporary politics. “We were really up against it to try and even jump up as high as the hoops of the current Senate. Where can you start? What is rock bottom now?” asks Roxburgh.
It is now more than five years since Australian workers have seen any significant increase in their standard of living, that’s the take-home from latest real wages data, writes Greg Jericho. “These figures show the lack of real wages growth is continuing. And for a government needing to go to an election by next May, time is running out for it to be able to point to incomes and say that their standard of living is better now than it was when they took office.”
Rates of obesity have been consistently rising in the US since 1976, but who’s the main culprit in this trend? Are we eating more? Are we exercising less? Or is the chief problem just that we lack fundamental willpower? According to George Monbiot, the answers are no, no, no. “Just as jobless people are blamed for structural unemployment, and indebted people are blamed for impossible housing costs, fat people are blamed for a societal problem. The thrill of disapproval chimes disastrously with industry propaganda. We delight in blaming the victims.”
What’s he done now?
Donald Trump has revoked the security clearance of John Brennan, the CIA director during the Obama administration, citing “erratic conduct and behavior”. Opponents say the move is linked to Brennan’s outspoken criticism of the president, and suggests “an authoritarian attitude in [Trump’s] governing style”.
Media roundup
The announcement of the earliest total fire bans in history across New South Wales is an ominous sign, reports the Canberra Times, as fire crews battle 83 blazes across the state, even before a potentially disastrous bushfire season. A $1bn renewable energy project in South Australia could allow the to state export energy, says the Adelaide Advertiser, with a clean energy council spokesperson saying the average household energy bill could reduce by “hundreds of dollars a year by early next decade”. And, 3 million Australians are living with less than two-thirds of their teeth, reports the Courier Mail, calling it a national sugar addiction crisis.
Coming up
Banking royal commission’s superannuation hearing turns to AMP Superannuation, after completing evidence from ANZ.
Queensland’s parliament inquiry into wage theft begins today as federal parliament sits for the final time this week.
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