Good morning. Most of the United Australia party’s videos have been pulled from YouTube for allegedly violating the tech giant’s advertising policy. The prime minister’s department breached FOI laws over the release of documents relating to Brittany Higgins. And David Stratton tells us about his beloved films.
Three out of every four video ads the United Australia party has posted on YouTube since late September have been pulled by Google for allegedly violating the tech giant’s advertising policies, according to Google’s transparency report. It is not clear what the removed videos contained or which of Google’s policies they are alleged to have violated. Since former the Liberal MP Craig Kelly joined the UAP in late August, the party has spent $2.684m on 25 ads run on YouTube.
The prime minister’s department breached freedom of information laws by dragging out a request for internal documents about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, prompting the regulator to warn it to urgently fix its “compliance with the FOI Act”. The request, made by an anonymous member of the public, asked for emails sent or received by a specific assistant secretary within a two-month window, which contained the keyword “Brittany”. Despite claiming the request was “complex” and “voluminous”, the department released just two of 20 relevant documents after being granted two extensions, and still failed to meet the 4 June 2021 deadline.
Centrelink’s decision to cancel the age pension of an 80-year-old man who lives in a nursing home with advanced dementia was “absurd and wrong”, a tribunal has found. The administrative appeals tribunal criticised Centrelink for the move as the man did not “personally have the capacity to comprehend … a decision to suspend his pension”.
Australia
A new space mission to hunt for potentially habitable planets around Earth’s closest neighbouring star system is under way. A privately funded Toliman telescope will be launched into low-Earth orbit in 2023 to search the Alpha Centauri star system, giving hope that interstellar space travel could be on the cards within the next 100,000 years.
Labor is hoping to make Australia’s internet frustrations an election issue, promising a $2.4bn boost to the national broadband network, which will stay in public hands.
The average Australian is working 1.5 hours more unpaid overtime each week since the start of the Covid pandemic, according to a new survey. Employers are benefiting from a total of $125bn of free labour.
Australia’s insurance council says $30bn must be spent to mitigate effects of rising sea levels on property but also warns “planned retreat from coastal hazard zones may be the best long-term community option”.
The world
Researchers have found evidence that suggests spyware made by an Israeli company has been used to target critics of Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes.
Myanmar’s military junta has charged Aung San Suu Kyi with “election fraud and lawless actions”. Military-controlled media reported 16 people had been prosecuted, including Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint, in relation to alleged fraud during the 2020 general election.
Germany has suspended its approval process for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would double its reliance on Russian gas after growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project.
Recommended reads
For his new book, My Favourite Movies, David Stratton selected a somewhat unusual number of films to feature: 111. “I started off with 101, which seems to be the fixed number for this sort of book, and then I just couldn’t narrow it down,” he says. Nostalgia helped Stratton decide which movies made the cut. He focused on including films he has a sentimental attachment to, the ones that remind him of a certain time in his life. For that reason, Stratton rates his memory as his most useful asset. He tells us why good recall is essential in his line of work, as well as the story of some important personal belongings.
The Little Loft House – an unassuming home in Canberra – is winning architecture prizes for its imaginative revamp that’s using 80% less energy through creative design. “A good home can’t just be about energy efficiency. It has to feel and look like a joyful home,” says the building scientist Jenny Edwards. Her Light House Architecture and Science team’s process is holistic, beginning with a focus on passive solar features and draught-proofing, ditching gas for all-electric appliances, improving function and liveability by rearranging and improving the floor plan, then addressing water storage and landscaping.
Stuck inside during Sydney’s Covid lockdown, Rafqa Touma fell down the endless TikTok abyss and found BookTok: the app’s reading corner that has amassed more than 26bn views. “There, I spent more time watching people talk about books than actually reading books myself,” she says. “One of my favourite video formats is less popular, and involves a creator sharing the plot of a book as though it were a real story of their own.”
Listen
Tasmania became the first state in Australia to open a casino in 1973, and since then it has become a place where the gambling lobby’s influence on politics is most bald-faced. Now a bill before Tasmania’s upper house has brought that influence into the open. In today’s Full Story, Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to the Tasmanian MP Kristie Johnston and Guardian Australia’s inequality reporter Stephanie Convery about how the pokies industry came to hold so much power in Tasmania.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Low Covid vaccination rates reflect practical barriers – but Māori have good reason to distrust the government. International news editor Bonnie Malkin introduces Morgan Godfery’s personal investigation of this fraught history for today’s Australia Reads.
Listen to the best of Guardian Australia’s journalism on Australia Reads podcast on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Nick Kyrgios has backtracked on comments supporting unvaccinated tennis players, saying it would not be “morally right” to let them play at the Australian Open. Kyrgios generated headlines after using his podcast to call for the cancellation of his home grand slam to limit the risk of a new outbreak in Melbourne. But he later rowed back on his remarks, saying the comment was “taken out of context”.
The Socceroos have had another stumble on the road to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, held to a draw by China in their qualifier in Sharjah.
Media roundup
The NSW government will for the first time track how much it spends on specific Indigenous programs and services, with data revealing it invested $1.1bn last financial year, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Royal Darwin hospital has suspended non-urgent elective surgeries for 72 hours amid the Northern Territory’s growing Covid cluster, the NT News says.
Coming up
NSW police continue the search for William Tyrrell.
Victorian parliament sits to debate the pandemic powers bill in the upper house.
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