Your noon Briefing: Board sacks Guthrie as ABC boss

Welcome to your noon digest of what’s been making news and what to watch for.

Hello readers. Here is your noon roundup of today’s top stories and a long read for lunchtime.

9/2/18: ABC Annual Public meeting at Ultimo, Sydney. Chairman Justin Milne, Managing director Michelle Guthrie, Peter Lewis and Dr Kirstin Ferguson. John Feder/The Australian.

Guthrie sacked

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has been sacked by the ABC board, bringing the curtain down on her five-year term just before it reaches the halfway stage. Her dismissal comes after months of tension between the managing director and ABC chairman Justin Milne, revealed by The Australian this morning. The pair have clashed over a number of key projects and how to deal with a hostile Coalition government as the ABC gets set to make a case for its next round of three-year funding.

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses the media during a visit to Mount Druitt Hospital in Sydney, Sunday, September 23, 2018. (AAP Image/Perry Duffin) NO ARCHIVING

What ScoMomentum?

In the short time since Newspoll was released late on Sunday evening we’ve already seen crowing from some reactionaries about the government’s “surge” in the polls now that Scott Morrison is running the show. Peter van Onselen asks: Does Newspoll really show a surge in support?

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Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh’s, has described a dormitory party gone awry and a drunken incident that she wants the F.B.I. to investigate.

New Kavanaugh accuser

Democrats in the US Senate are investigating a new bombshell allegation of sexual misconduct against President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, The New Yorker said on Sunday. Deborah Ramirez, 53, told the magazine Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken college party at Yale University in the 1980s, thrust his genitals in her face and caused her to touch them without her consent as she pushed him away.

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Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Gen III Helmet in unclass sim

The long read: Air supremacy by stealth

In three months Australia will take delivery of the first of 72 Joint Strike Fighters, a fifth-generation fighter plane that will replace the country’s ageing fleet of Super Hornets. Depending on who you listen to, the JSF is either the most formidable fighter on the planet or an expensive boondoggle the likes of which this country has never seen. Either way, writes Paul Maley, it is coming.

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Comment of the day

“Ultimately the right decision I feel. Too much BBC content rather than Australian. Too much bias towards the left rather than Australian mainstream. Attempts at comedy based on abuse rather than genuine satire or humour ... Most Australians were paying taxes to fund the ABC which reponded with contempt for mainstream Australians and their values.”

Greg, in response to ‘ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie sacked by the board’.