Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 4 October.
Top stories
Deforestation has continued along the Great Barrier Reef, despite federal government pledges to protect the natural wonder. Forests three times the size of the Australian Capital Territory have been bulldozed in the reef catchment zone over the past five years. The area cleared last year was larger in size than that covered by new regrowth. Jessica Panegyres, a nature campaigner with the Wilderness Society, said it showed Australia should be considered a global deforestation hotspot on a par with the Amazon and Indonesia. “The federal government has promised the world it is doing everything it can to protect the reef,” she told Guardian Australia. “[It] has simply refused to act on deforestation, despite the major impacts on forests, wildlife, the reef and the climate.”
The figures are included in the latest national greenhouse gas emissions accounts, which the government released quietly on Friday afternoon in the lead-up to the AFL and NRL grand finals. They showed Australia’s emissions increased by 1.3% in the year to March 2018, continuing a trend at odds with the government’s repeated claim it is on track to meet the target it set at the 2015 Paris climate conference. The government has spent billions of dollars addressing poor water quality, considered second only to climate change as a threat to the reef.
The IMF says the global economy is at risk of another crash after the failure of governments and regulators to push through reforms needed to protect the system from reckless behaviour. The warning, from the the Washington-based lender of last resort’s Global Financial Stability report, said with global debt levels well above those at the time of the last crash in 2008, the risk remained that unregulated parts of the financial system could trigger a global panic. “This should serve as a wake-up call,” said the IMF head, Christine Lagarde, who is concerned that the total value of global debt, in both the public and private sectors, has skyrocketed by 60% in the decade since the financial crisis to reach a record high.
Labor will today unveil a plan to extend subsidised kindergarten to three-year-olds. The initiative will give both three- and four-year-olds access to 600 hours of preschool or kindergarten in a $1.75bn funding commitment if Labor wins the next federal election. The plan would extend 15 hours of subsidised early childhood education to three-year-olds for the first time. Four-year-olds already have access to universal early childhood education but the existing program is funded year by year. In a statement issued before Thursday’s announcement, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said: “This is an economic and social reform as profound as lifting the school leaving age and opening up universal access to universities.”
Three key Republicans have condemned Donald Trump’s mockery of Christine Blasey Ford. Their votes could decide Brett Kavanaugh’s fate. At a campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Trump cast doubt on Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee for the US supreme court, attempted to rape her when the two were teenagers in the early 1980s. “I wish he hadn’t have done it and I just say it’s kind of appalling,” said Jeff Flake, the Republican senator who last week broke ranks to say he would support a “limited” FBI investigation. Two other Republican swing votes, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also rebuked the president from Capitol Hill.
Female scientist, you say? Wikipedia, you say? Nobel, you say! In March, when a Wikipedia user tried to create a profile for Donna Strickland, who this week became the first female winner of the Nobel for physics in 55 years, the page was denied by a moderator. Soon after Tuesday’s Nobel announcement, however, the Wikipedia community scrambled to build a profile. The belated recognition contrasted with that afforded to Strickland’s colleague Gérard Mourou – with whom she shared the award – who had a Wikipedia page in 2005.
Sport
The former world boxing champion Jeff Horn has vowed to end Anthony Mundine’s boxing career, confirming he will launch his bid for another title tilt in a 71kg catchweight bout against Mundine at Suncorp Stadium on 30 November.
Cristiano Ronaldo has denied an accusation of rape made against him by Kathryn Mayorga, claiming such a crime was “against everything that I am and believe in”.
Thinking time
Could Tim Murray deliver a Wentworth win for Labor? The chairman of the Tamarama surf club grew up in the electorate and still lives there, punctuated by a long stint working in China. He now runs his own investment advisory firm, which he hopes will make him more appealing to the entrepreneurs and small business people of Wentworth, writes Anne Davies. Murray says housing affordability is “a huge issue” in Wentworth, one of the most expensive areas of Sydney. He points out there are also a large number of renters: 44.2%, according to the 2016 census.
Drier, hotter and getting worse: this year’s drought is different, farmers say. Gabrielle Chan and Mike Bowers travelled into the heartland of Australia’s drought to interview farmers about how they are being affected, how they are coping, and why this drought is different. In part two of a Guardian Australia series, the New Normal, Chan writes about drought in a changing climate and takes note of a shifting conversation about how the dry continent should deal with the idea that drought is here to stay.
When Brigid Delaney met Oval she had one goal: to keep him alive. For anyone housesitting for someone who has a pet, nothing else can matter. After a week the cat is alive, if full of contempt – the pair have failed to bond. Then disaster strikes, twice.
Media roundup
The Australian is leading with Bill Shorten’s preschool policy speech coming up today. What it’s saying: “The speech will mark a deliberate move to steer the opposition away from the class-war rhetoric that has underpinned Mr Shorten’s leadership and begin the party’s pitch to aspirational middle-class Australia.” The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age report that one of the key architects of the Paris climate deal has “lambasted” the Morrison government’s emissions stance, saying it is “anti-science”. And the ABC‘s David Taylor writes that economists warn the banking royal commission could trigger the biggest housing bust in three decades.
Coming up
The consumer advocacy group Choice will announce its annual Shonky awards highlighting the dodgy, dubious, deceitful and dangerous products that come to its attention.
The Victorian supreme court is due to make a ruling on the release of a controversial report into bullying and harassment within the state’s fire brigade.
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