Your midday briefing

Hello readers. Here’s the latest on how today has unfolded so far, plus a long read for lunchtime.

Hello readers. Here’s how today unfolded so far, plus a long read for lunchtime.

SSM can wait: Australian Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi. Picture: AAP

Bernardi tardy on SSM, bullish on citizenship audit

Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi has called for a delay in legalising same-sex marriage if the Yes vote prevails, declaring it was more pressing to ensure all MPs are eligible to sit in parliament. Senator Bernardi, who has been pushing for parliament to be suspended while the eligibility of all MPs is audited, said there were more urgent problems in the remainder of the sitting year than passing a bill that will amend the Marriage Act.

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Penn and Telstra: Chief executive Andy Penn at Telstra’s HQ in Melbourne. Picture: David Geraghty

Telstra compo for NBN go-slow

Telstra has agreed to compensate around 42,000 customers after failing to provide the speeds promised to them over the National Broadband Network (NBN), with the incumbent telco admitting that it may have contravened Australian Consumer Law. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said on Wednesday that Telstra’s measures will include offering refunds to customers, the option to change speed plans, and exit from contracts without paying a fee.

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Mourners place flowers outside Banksia Road Public School in Greenacre, in Sydney’s south west, where two 8-year-old boys died after a car ploughed through their classroom. Picture: AAP

Tribute for Banksia school victims as driver ‘sorry’

Distraught staff and children have returned to Banksia Street Public School this morning to pay their respects to the victims of yesterday’s tragic accident, which claimed the lives of two young boys and injured 12. Brightly coloured flowers, glowsticks and balloons have been attached to the entrance of the Greenacre school in tribute to the two eight-year-olds, who died when Maya al-Shennag drove her Toyota Kluger through the wall of their weatherboard classroom.

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Tortured truth: US President Donald Trump prepares to make a speech at the Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo. Picture: AP

The lunchtime long read: Trump vs the truth

Winston Churchill once described Joseph Stalin’s Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. Donald Trump’s relationship with the media is all these things, as well as being a contradictory, preposterous conundrum. Mark Day considers the riddle of The Donald, a creation of the media who seeks to strip the media of its power by declaring it fake.

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Bonfire of the vanities: Harvey Weinstein, seen here as a giant effigy that was set ablaze by Britain’s Edenbridge Bonfire Society, is now alleged to have hired Mossad spies to dig dirt on his accusers. Picture: AFP

Wednesday weirdness: When Weinstein met the Mossad

Harvey Weinstein hired a team of ex-Mossad agents to dig up dirt on actresses who accused him of sexual assault and to spy on reporters investigating their claims in an effort to silence them, a new expose claims.

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Comment of the Day

“Was it a combination of luck and plotting that made Turnbull a successful businessman rather than temperament and judgment?”

Michael in reponse to Peta Credlin’s opinion piece claiming the PM lacks political nous.