Good morning, this is Lauren Waldhuter bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 2 September.
Top stories
Money for Queensland’s Urannah dam project has flowed to a Liberal-National party-linked firm. The project has been a pipe-dream since the 1950s and the federal government has given $12m towards planning the latest version of the scheme championed by prominent Nationals. It said those grants would go to a regional business association and a Brisbane-based renewables firm. But Guardian Australia can reveal that the money ultimately flowed to a separate firm, run by prominent Queensland LNP figures and donors. Some say the revelations raise serious integrity issues.
Tony Abbott says governments need to ask tough questions about the cost of keeping elderly Covid-19 patients alive during the pandemic. In a speech to a UK thinktank, the former prime minister railed against Covid-19 “health dictatorships” saying not enough politicians were “thinking like health economists” about the “levels of deaths we might need to live with”. He criticised harsh lockdowns and said young people were at risk of becoming reliant on government benefits during the pandemic. Shortly afterwards, Victoria extended its state of emergency for another six months in a late-night parliamentary vote. But Scott Morrison is trying to get border closures scrapped between New South Wales and Victoria by Christmas. Meanwhile, an unusual craze is dishing out some cheer during Melbourne’s lockdown.
Tens of millions of school students have returned to classrooms across Europe. Social distancing and hand sanitiser are now as common as pens and pencils. But Greece has delayed the reopening of its schools by a week as it grapples with a spike in infections. Meanwhile, Hungary is implementing harsher measures than at the height of the pandemic to ward off a second wave that is “knocking on the door”. Its borders have been sealed in a move criticised by the European Union, where politicians are against blanket border closures. And AstraZeneca will scale up production of Oxford University’s promising Covid-19 vaccine as part of its £50m deal. It says its global manufacturing capacity is close to 3bn doses.
Australia
Covid-19 has fuelled protectionist and authoritarian trends around the world, officials within the Department of Foreigns Affairs and Trade have warned. As they prepare to front a parliamentary hearing, they also say there are “clear differences” in Australia’s increasingly tense relationship with China.
Labor says it could block a proposal allowing money from a taxpayer-owned green bank to flow to fossil fuel investment. The government wants to redefine gas-fired power as “low-emissions technology”. The aim is to enable the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to make investments in grid infrastructure.
The network SBS has been criticised for naming a white woman as director of news and current affairs. Mandi Wicks’ appointment comes two months after staff pleaded with the board to appoint someone other than a white Anglo male to reflect the broadcaster’s multicultural charter.
The world
US president Donald Trump has been forced to deny he suffered a series of “mini-strokes” last November after it was reported that Mike Pence was put on “standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily” if Trump had needed to be anaesthetised during a surprise hospital visit.
Two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies have fatally shot a black man, Dijon Kizzee, after ordering him to stop on his bicycle. Kizzee’s body was left in the streets for hours, sparking a large demonstration of angry residents and activists demanding accountability for a sheriff’s agency with a legacy of controversial killings, brutality cases and corruption scandals.
The British government says plans to sign a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union by December aren’t looking good. But it has blamed Brussels for making things “difficult”. Official talks take place next week.
The Philippine president has publicly ordered a top customs official to “shoot and kill” drug smugglers, taking his controversial war on drugs to a new level. Rodrigo Duterte said he’d told his top official to “shape up … I approved the purchase of firearms and until now you haven’t killed even one?”
Recommended reads
‘Do you get jealous?’ It’s probably the most obvious question you’d have for a polyamorous couple. Paul Dalgarno, who has had a wife for 15 years and another partner for four, says it’s one he gets asked all the time. So what are the rules? Are there many STIs? And are you in control? These six questions from Dalgarno’s new book should satisfy the curiosity of non-polyamorous folk and offer food for thought: “Polyamorous relationships are as varied as any other straight, gay, lesbian, asexual or wholly platonic relationship.”
Across Melbourne, gyms are closed, the public male gaze is absent and Dejan Jotanovic says it’s time to rethink narrow body ideals. Especially for gay men. He writes that gay men are already experiencing a higher level of body dissatisfaction and it’s time to change cultural expectations. “By neutralising the body, we’re taught to better appreciate its achievements, its potential, the limits of what it can do for us, far beyond our perceptive desirability and the socially reproduced standards of beauty.”
Ranjana Srivastava looks at the complex conversations that are had during the final days of life. She writes that instead of prolonging life, a dying patient’s final wish is an antidote for our times: “Everyone must die and we have all lost someone we love. But on the other hand, it is not unbelievable that in a glossy world that craves instant gratification, there is no pressing need to contemplate mortality, and the question of how to conduct ourselves at the end of life becomes so foreign as to be confronting.”
Listen
Today’s episode of Full Story explores whether public servants have the right to free speech. Three months after writing about how Covid helped big tech, federal public servant Josh Krook was given a choice: remove the blog post or be sacked. Now, he’s speaking out about what he says is censorship. Our reporter Christopher Knaus takes up the story.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Photograph: Harriet Lander - Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC/Getty Images
In football, Chelsea Women’s deal to sign 27-year-old Pernille Harder from Wolfsburg could be historic. Her transfer fee is believed to be around £300,000 (A$548,000), which would be a world record in the women’s game.
Common sense may have gone out the window with plans to stage the Rugby Championship this year. Matt McIlraith looks at whether holding the tournament in New Zealand or Australia presents a risk to locals and players.
Media roundup
The New South Wales deputy premier believes the cancellation of Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve celebrations “is inevitable”, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. China has slapped a ban on Australia’s biggest grain exporter, reports the Financial Review, after claims pests were found in a barley shipment. That’s amid fragile relations between the two countries. The Courier Mail reports on “secret talks” that may have helped the state win the right to host the AFL grand final.
Coming up
Economists expect Wednesday’s national accounts will show the pandemic has ended Australia’s record 29 years of economic expansion.
Hearings continue at Victoria’s Covid-19 hotel inquiry and the aged care royal commission.
And if you’ve read this far
After a couple of recent interviews went awry, Donald Trump chose to have a one-on-one with one of his chief boosters: Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who spoke on his behalf at the 2016 convention. But things did not go entirely smoothly. Even by his own standards, the interview contained some bizarre and outrageous statements, from the “people that are in the dark shadows” to comparing police shootings to a game of golf. Here are the five most bizarre moments from the interview.
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