Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 24 September.
Top stories
Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating. In a stinging speech on Monday, the teenage Swedish climate activist told governments that “you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.” Days after millions of young people took to the streets worldwide to demand emergency action on climate change, leaders gathered for the annual United Nations general assembly aiming to inject fresh momentum into efforts to curb carbon emissions. While Scott Morrison did not attend the summit, he issued a challenge to China while in Chicago, saying that it was a “newly developed” rather than a developing economy, and argued that status conferred developed-world obligations on the Chinese leadership in terms of action on the climate crisis.
Labor will oppose a government push to expand the controversial cashless welfare card and extend existing trial sites, saying it will only support income management if the scheme is made voluntary. Labor’s hardening opposition to the card, which it initially supported in trial communities, comes as the Northern Territory’s peak body for Aboriginal organisations likened the “unwarranted haste” of the cashless debit card push in the territory to the “disastrous and ill-advised imposition” of the 2007 intervention. As part of the Coalition’s revived “compassionate conservative” welfare agenda, the government has introduced legislation to expand the card to Cape York and the NT, where it will replace the basics card, and extend existing sites. Without an extension being granted by parliament, the existing trial sites are due to expire in June next year.
New South Wales has been secretly exploring long-dismissed plan to turn coastal rivers inland, to provide more water for irrigators and towns in the west of the state. The proposal, put forward by WaterNSW, echoes the plan for turning rivers inland first mooted by John Bradfield, the engineer who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in 1938. He was unable to convince government of its merits before he died in 1943. But the idea appears to have new currency. The NSW proposals are revealed in a freedom of information request made by the Guardian. The documents show significant work has been done on at least four projects involving pumping water from coastal rivers over the Great Dividing Range to replenish western NSW rivers, which are in the grip of a drought.
World
Jeremy Corbyn has seen off an attempt by grassroots activists to force UK Labour to adopt a remain position ahead of a general election. Amid chaotic scenes at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, delegates rejected a composite motion that would have seen Labour pledge to campaign for remain. Meanwhile EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has described Boris Johnson’s solution for replacing the Irish backstop as “unacceptable”.
Benjamin Netanyahu has come out narrowly ahead of Benny Gantz during consultations on who should lead the next Israeli government, although it remained unclear if he would be chosen to form a coalition.
Donald Trump has attempted to shrug off renewed demands for his impeachment over the allegation he tried to pressure a foreign government to hurt his leading rival, Joe Biden, in next year’s presidential election.
Narendra Modi defended his government’s actions in Kashmir and accused Pakistan of harbouring terrorists during a packed rally in Texas attended by US president Donald Trump.
Two men, including a photojournalist, have been shot and injured by a Haitian senator, who opened fire outside the country’s parliament, amid chaotic scenes as the government attempted to confirm the appointment of a new prime minister.
Opinion and analysis
Those asking if Australia needs a recession are either too young to recall or have forgotten, writes Greg Jericho. Not only do recessions wreck the economy and lives; they utterly change society. “One way to look at this is to observe the change that recessions have on the work of men in their 40s – that age when usually they have children and are nearing the peak of their earning ability. The 1982 and 1990s recessions and the GFC saw falls in the percentage of men in their 40s in employment from peaks that have never again been reached.”
UK Labour elite won a battle, but it might have just lost the war, writes John Crace. “Jeremy had definitely won. He had at least 110% of the vote. It had been the most democratic vote in the history of all democratic votes. The confusion had been that all the remainers couldn’t see all the people who had voted for Jeremy who had been standing just outside the hall. Labour had clutched defeat from the jaws of ambiguity. Just when the Tories were on their knees, Labour had proved itself unwilling to subject itself to scrutiny. The voice of the majority of its members ignored. Not even allowed a proper count. Party policy was now ‘make me something, but I’ve no idea what’.”
Sport
Kamaishi is set to play an emotional role in Japan’s World Cup story, writes Andy Bull. “There used to be a telephone box in the middle of the Kamaishi stadium. Nodoka Kikuchi reckons it was somewhere right around the halfway line. She’d know. She was the last person to ever use it.”
Russia faces the prospect of being banned from next year’s Olympics in Tokyo, after the World Anti-Doping Agency gave it three weeks to explain apparent inconsistencies in data from its Moscow laboratory.
Thinking time: the chicken curtain
“Urban planners and columnists have often used the ‘latte line’ or the ‘Colorbond fence’ as simple shorthand to separate Sydney’s best-off residents from everyone else,” writes Katie Cunningham. “It’s a diagonal stripe that bifurcates the city, starting near the airport and running north and west. If you live to the north and east of that line, so the story goes, you’re probably doing alright. Find yourself on the south-west side and your economic prospects worsen. Recently, the most popular way to sort Sydneysiders used a different metric: charcoal poultry. It’s called the chicken curtain, or the Red Rooster line. Sydney University magazine Honi Soit explained it in 2017: ‘The formula is simple: sketch the points of all the Red Roosters in Sydney and you get a surprisingly neat indication of the border of Western Sydney.’
“That line is about to be broken. Last Wednesday, photographic evidence erupted on social media that cult Lebanese fast food joint El Jannah was set to open in Newtown. The chicken chain currently has six Sydney locations – Granville, Punchbowl, Blacktown, Campbelltown, Penrith and its most recent addition in Kogarah – suburbs between 14km and 55km from the Sydney CBD. Its King Street storefront will be El Jannah’s furthest incursion east, and upsets a convenient method of mapping the city’s class lines. The chain opening in Newtown might be a reminder that Sydney is not as segregated as it’s made out to be.”
Media roundup
The Australian leads with the PM’s “practical” green plan. The Sydney Morning Herald reveals an “audacious” plan by New Zealand to stop Australian beekeepers selling ‘manuka’ honey. The Australian Financial Review reports that “An argument over the valuation of a property deal in China is at the heart of Huang Xiangmo’s $140m dispute with the tax office, which alleges the billionaire understated capital gains from the transaction.”
Coming up
Scott Morrison will attend a reception with Australian business leaders, led by former US ambassador John Berry. Rupert Murdoch is expected to attend.
Unions, business groups and human rights lawyers are set to appear in Sydney before a parliamentary committee looking at the Morrison government’s proposed “ensuring integrity” laws.
Sign up
If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
