Your noon Briefing
Hello readers. Here’s the latest on how the day is playing out plus a long read for lunchtime.
Hello readers. In your noon digest, Kristina Keneally asks why Malcolm Turnbull is “spreading China phobia’, Dasher deliberates, and in the long read, John Ferguson weighs in on the Sins of the Fathers as the child sex abuse royal commission gets set to hand down its final report.
Campaigning Keneally slams ‘China-phobe’ PM
Kristina Keneally accuses Malcolm Turnbull of “spreading China phobia” and compares his rhetoric with that of Pauline Hanson. Labor frontbencher Linda Burney, meantime, says she is sure disgraced senator Sam Dastyari is “thinking very deeply” about his role within the party, amid reports that Senator Dastyari tried to persuade deputy leader Tanya Plibersek not to meet a pro-democracy activist who had upset China. A spokesman for Senator Dastyari has rejected the claims as “complete rubbish”.
“They don’t like it, they are very frustrated by it. They feel this is a rhetoric they last heard from Pauline Hanson and One Nation 20 years ago.”
Kristina Keneally
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‘Dead meat’ cries all lies: Dutton
The immigration minister has accused asylum-seekers on Manus Island of “lying” and producing propaganda after they released video footage allegedly showing locals threatening them. “It is complete nonsense,” Liberal Peter Dutton told reporters in Melbourne today. “Some of these people are lying. There is no question about that.” The footage appears to show Papua New Guinea locals, possibly drunk, coming to their new accommodation and threatening them. One man looks to be holding a metal pipe or bar and brandishes it at asylum-seekers through a gate, shouting “you’re dead meat”.
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Trump’s Coke-fuelled tweets
The most talked-about man in the world rises at about 5.30am and sometimes sends his first tweet of the morning while watching television propped up on the pillows of the White House master bedroom. US President Donald Trump tends to share his thoughts on the news with anyone in the room, including the household staff who bring him lunch or one of the dozen Diet Cokes that he drinks most days. Meanwhile, the redoubtable Richo takes aim at Trump’s “singular moment of lunacy”, while Jennifer Oriel suggests the media has selective hearing when it comes to Trump’s position on Israel.
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The long read: Sins of the fathers
When the late Frank Little retired two decades ago, he recounted with humility and understated humour the highlight of his 22-year calling as Archbishop of Melbourne. Fast-forward a decade and few could have predicted that his fall from grace would be so catastrophically complete and his history so comprehensively rewritten, writes John Ferguson. As the child sex abuse royal commission prepares to release its final report this week, two of its last three case studies focused on dioceses in Melbourne and Ballarat and the third on the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle. In the Victorian reports, the commission found that the once admired Little had led a coterie of senior Catholics in Melbourne between 1974 and 1996 who were responsible for a run of cover-ups of sex offending by clergy and a long-term pattern of failing to protect children.
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Comment of the day
“Trump’s inexperience in international relations has resulted in Trump being played like a fiddle by other countries including Saudi Arabia, Israel and North Korea.”
margaret, in response to Jennifer Oriel’s analysis, ‘Trump’s support for a two-state solution is being ignored’
China’s great wall of silence
China deliberately concealed information about the coronavirus, and now it is fighting an inquiry. So what is Beijing hiding?
Your noon Briefing
Your 2-minute digest of the day’s top stories.