Your morning Briefing: Poll pain from leadership coup revealed
Welcome to your 2-minute briefing on the day’s top stories and must-reads.
Hello readers. Here is your 2-minute digest of what’s making news today.
Pain from leadership coup
Scott Morrison faces an epic challenge to restore confidence in his shattered government, with new polling analysis showing a collapse in support for the Coalition in every mainland state and across every demographic group since the leadership spill. Analysis of four Newspolls since the August 24 leadership spill casts a bleak picture for the government six months out from an expected May 2019 election. Keep up with the PM’s first Question Time as leader of a minority government in our live blog, PoliticsNow.
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Price is right
Environment Minister Melissa Price has emerged as parliament’s fly-in, fly-out MP, racking up more than $450,000 in travel costs to visit her rural electorate while living in a $1.59 million luxury home in Perth. The Liberal member for Durack, whose West Australian seat is the biggest in Australia, charges taxpayers every time she spends the night in the electorate, while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on flights and hire cars.
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Big brother wants access
Many of us are unaware a transformational digital initiative is about to involve every Australian: digital identity. Many are probably equally unaware of the problems with the approach, including the risk of a Western version of China’s social credit system that can effectively rank individuals and shape behaviour.
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Guthrie’s golden bungee
How many cents a day will each Australian taxpayer end up paying for Michelle Guthrie’s golden bungee jump from the ABC? Margin Call understands Guthrie’s closely guarded statement of claim in the Fair Work Commission makes clear that, whatever the additional motivations, her ambitious legal adventure is very much about money.
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Body double
Just hours after writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a man strolled out of the diplomatic post apparently wearing the columnist’s clothes as part of a macabre deception to sow confusion over his fate, according to surveillance video leaked. The new video broadcast by CNN, as well as a pro-government Turkish newspaper report that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage made four calls to the royal’s office from the consulate around the same time, put ever-increasing pressure on the kingdom.
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Johannes Leak’s view