Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 26 September.
Top stories
Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have conducted a tense open meeting addressing the scandal that prompted an impeachment inquiry against the US president. It caps a difficult day for the Republican party, on which a damning White House memo revealed that Trump had pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to help investigate his political rival Joe Biden, and an internal party briefing note aiming to limit fallout was accidentally emailed to a list including rival House Democrats. Elsewhere, Elizabeth Warren has surged to the front of the Democratic primary field for the 2020 election, after she topped a national poll – ahead of Biden and Bernie Sanders – for the first time.
Taxpayers spent $2,600 for Barnaby Joyce to charter a flight between Melbourne and Horsham so the former Nationals leader could attend a regional show alongside a local Nationals candidate during the lead-up to the federal election. Joyce attended the Wimmera Machinery Field Day in his capacity as drought envoy, as part of an expenses bill of $675,000 accumulated during nine months in the role.
Backpackers in Australia are working in unsafe and gruelling conditions for as little as $4 an hour, according to stories alleging exploitation being shared under the Instagram hashtag #88daysaslave. Visitors under the working holiday scheme have shared more than 5,000 posts, including reports of sexual abuse and underpayment of workers desperate to avoid deportation. The 88 days refers to the time that first-year visa holders must work in regional areas to be eligible for a second-year visa, a program the federal government has hailed as a success after a 20% rise in uptake last year.
World
A faction of British Conservative MPs have declared “a real sense of doom” over Boris Johnson’s tactics, as the prime minister continued to invite Labour to face a “day of reckoning” by going to an election, while Jeremy Corbyn repeated calls for Johnson to resign. The PM also sparked fury by arguing that the best way of honouring the memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox was to get Brexit done.
Italian authorities have closed off roads and evacuated homes after warnings that a portion of the Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapse. Up to 250,000 cubic metres of ice is in danger of breaking free, with Europe’s heatwave said to have accelerated the melt.
Israel’s president has invited Benjamin Netanyahu to form government, giving the Likud leader six weeks to put together a functioning coalition. Should the 69-year-old fail to do so, it is expected that the opposition leader, Benny Gantz, will also be invited to try.
The woman who sparked France’s equivalent of the #MeToo campaign has been found guilty of defaming the man she accused. Ordered to pay €15,000 in damages to the executive and €5,000 in legal fees, Sandra Muller has called the ruling a “backwards step”.
Angela Merkel has promised more than half a billion euros to revitalise Germany’s crisis-hit forests after a combination of storms, drought, forest fires and aggressively spreading bark beetle plagues have destroyed 250,000 football fields worth of forest.
Opinion and analysis
When he was 17, the Adelaide singer Adrian Eagle weighed 270kg and was battling depression. Now he’s taking his gospel of positivity to the world, writes Brodie Lancaster. Ten minutes after the rapper 360 shared Eagle’s cover of Redemption Song to more than 800,000 of his fans, the then 26-year-old was off on his path. Four years later he has released his long-awaited debut EP, Mama, and is going from strength to strength. “Music has to heal parts of me before it can do anything else,” Eagle says. “I feel like the longer I get to live, the more I’ll be able to know myself.”
The economy, as we all have a fair idea, is not performing as it should, writes Greg Jericho. With the governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, hinting at another interest rate cut, it appears that monetary and fiscal policy are not pulling in the same direction. “We have a government rather joyfully talking up a budget surplus for this financial year, which by definition is removing growth from the economy. And so what is left? Monetary policy – and it seems likely to be used again.” Another interest rate cut, if announced, would set a new record low.
Sport
Australian Rohan Dennis has blown away the cycling world’s best, defending his world time trial championship by more than a minute, finishing the 50km course 69 seconds ahead of the Belgian prodigy Remco Evenepoel.
Two years ago Richmond ran on to the MCG as heavy underdogs before winning a fairytale first premiership in 37 years. But given the context of their season, Kylie Maslen asks, if they win another flag on Saturday could this one prove even more remarkable?
Thinking time: Greta Thunberg’s ferocious courage
With just 495 words, Greta Thunberg’s address to the UN’s climate action summit has already resonated much longer than the four and a half minutes it took to deliver. In a speech reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Thunberg spoke not with rich allegorical sophistry, but rather clear, short, emotive impact, writes Richard Flanagan. As with Lincoln, the enormous power of the speech was the timing – coming just days after the global strike of schoolchildren, inspired by her original, solitary strike. With her distinction between “we” – those who want action on climate change – and “you”, leaders like Donald Trump or Scott Morrison who proudly don’t, Thunberg has clearly drawn the battle lines.
“Watching Greta Thunberg’s speech I understood what last Friday was about: a historic turning point where for the first time the power of we met the power of you without artifice, without compromise and with a ferocious courage,” Flanagan writes. “Millions marched last Friday. The next march will be bigger. The battle lines are finally clear. And each of us must now decide: am I you or am I we?”
Media roundup
Scott Morrison has used his inaugural speech to the UN to pledge to lead the way in cleaning up the world’s oceans, reports the Financial Review, as the PM continued to reject criticism Australia was not contributing sufficiently to tackling climate change. A Melbourne nurse who received a $1m windfall from a dying 92-year-old bachelor has been banned from practicing, reveals the Herald Sun. And leading social services groups have called a sweeping overhaul of gambling regulations in South Australia “a recipe for greater gambling harm”, writes the Adelaide Advertiser.
Coming up
A directions hearing will be held for Bernard Collaery, the former lawyer to Witness K, the ex-spy who revealed that Australia bugged the Timor-Leste cabinet room.
The post-politics roles of the former senior Coalition ministers Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne will be examined in a report due to be tabled in parliament.
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