Your noon Briefing

Welcome to your noon roundup of how the day has played out so far and what to watch for.

Hello readers. Here is your noon digest of what’s making news and a long read for lunchtime.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott addresses the Sydney Institute on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. (AAP Image/Brendan Esposito) NO ARCHIVING

Dutton ‘right’

Tony Abbott says Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton was “absolutely right” to say that there should be a place for persecuted white South African farmers under our humanitarian immigration program, in an apparent rebuke of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s refusal to back Mr Dutton yesterday. Mr Dutton last week argued for the fast-tracking of humanitarian visas for white South African farmers, sparking a furious response from the South African government, which demanded he retract his comments.

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18.3.2018.18.3.2018.Former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill on last nightÕs election result and LaborÕs 16 years in government.Jay Weatherill at Adelaide Oval. PIC:TAIT SCHMAAL.

Power ‘fail’

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says South Australians voted with their feet against a “failed approach” to energy policy when they ended Labor leader Jay Weatherill’s term as premier on Saturday. Senator Cormann said Saturday’s poll had been a good day for Liberal Premier-elect Stephen Marshall, and a rejection of Mr Weatherill’s pledge to deliver 75 per cent renewable energy by 2025.

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Karl Stefanovic and Georgie Gardner

Uber allies

Details of Karl and Peter Stefanovic’s secret Uber phone call have been revealed with the driver spilling the beans on the brothers’ extraordinary 45-minute spray on colleagues including Today co-host Georgie Gardner. Today’s edition of New Idea magazine contains details of the late-night Uber journey in which Peter and his wife, Today newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys, spoke to Karl on speakerphone attacking Gardner, Today’s entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins, senior 60 Minutes staff and Nine management.

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The Tiangong-1 Chinese space station is likely to smash back down into Earth sometime between March 24th and April 19th. Supplied

Death spiral

Its name means “heavenly palace”. But Tiangong-1, an eight-tonne Chinese space station launched in 2011, will not remain in the heavens much longer. After visits from crews in 2012 and 2013, Tiangong-1’s mission officially ended in March 2016. A few months later China’s space agency appeared to confirm what amateur skywatchers already suspected, that it had lost control of the station. It said it expected Tiangong-1 to fall from the sky some time late in 2017.

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Man wearing a cap holding a gun through a broken window in a dark abandoned warehouse. Istock

The long read: Assassins’ creed

As Europeans know to their lamentable cost, assassinations can start wars, even world wars. The neurochemical attack this month on Sergei Skripal, a retired Russian double agent, in Salisbury, a sleepy British cathedral city, is just the latest in a line of brazen incidents which have brought state-sanctioned executions back into the spotlight.

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Comment of the day

“Georgie’s professional approach compared with Karl’s left wing bias and self aggrandisement ensures the longer lasting of these two will be Georgie Gardner.”

John, in response to ‘Stefanovic brothers’ Uber rant rocks Nine’.