Your noon Briefing

Hello readers. Here’s the latest on how the day is playing out plus a long read for lunchtime.

Hello readers. Here’s your digest of what’s happened so far today, plus a long read for lunchtime.

OAM recipient Don Burke on his Kenthurst property

Burke calls in lawyers

Former gardening show host and nationally renowned television personality Don Burke has enlisted senior defamation lawyers after the ABC and Fairfax Media published allegations he was a “sexual predator” and “high-grade abuser” of younger female employees with whom he worked. Days before veteran journalist Tracey Spicer is due to release hundreds of complaints of sexual misconduct against dozens of members of Australia’s media industry, a joint investigation by the ABC and Fairfax reportedly interviewed more than 50 people who have made serious allegations about Burke’s behaviour. Three women have been named so far in the allegations. Burke, 70, is understood to have engaged Patrick George, a senior partner at Kennedys Australia, to act for him in any legal action he decides to take following the coverage.

“I ... believe that this publication is opportunistic and intended to severely damage my reputation, by trying to link my alleged behaviour with the appalling behaviour of Harvey Weinstein.”

Don Burke

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Dawson MP George Christensen has apologised for the effect the Turnbull Government has had on the Queensland State Election.

Coalition cracks widen

In live coverage of the Queensland election wash-up, Federal Liberals have told a Nationals backbencher to pull his head in after he blamed the prime minister for the high One Nation vote, AAP reports. The Nationals have used the election result — likely to return a Labor government — to reiterate the need for their party to have a strong and distinct identity, separate from their coalition partner. Outspoken Nationals MP George Christensen on Sunday apologised to One Nation voters in north and central Queensland for the LNP letting them down. The One Nation vote was higher than the LNP’s in every electorate bar one — within his federal seat of Dawson.

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David Warner (left) and Cameron Bancroft (right) of Australia congratulate each other at stumps on Day 4 of the First Ashes Test match between Australia and England at the Gabba in Brisbane, Sunday, November 26, 2017. (AAP Image/Darren England) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY, IMAGES TO BE USED FOR NEWS REPORTING PURPOSES ONLY, NO COMMERCIAL USE WHATSOEVER, NO USE IN BOOKS WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT FROM AAP

A very short day five

Our live coverage continues in what is shaping as a very short day five of the First Ashes Test at the Gabba, with Australia on the cusp of victory at 0-150 in its second innings, requiring only another 20 runs for victory. After three absorbing, fluctuating days play, Australia seized control of this Test yesterday when it bowled out England for 195 in its second innings. Even with its 26-run first innings advantage, that still left a victory target that in the past would have taunted Australia but right from the beginning of the run chase it was not so much a case of if Australia would win but when.

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Local residents react to a mural that has been painted over with black paint in Newtown, Sydney, November 17, 2017. The mural, created by street artist Scott Marsh, depicted former prime minister Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell involved in a sex act celebrating the same-sex marriage survey 'yes' result. (AAP Image/Danny Casey) NO ARCHIVING

Libs in Yes vote ‘betrayal’

Three Turnbull government ­assistant ministers have accused moderate colleagues of betraying Coalition voters over the same-sex marriage plebiscite by trading away promised protections for a deal with the Greens and Labor. With the internal feud in the Coalition escalating over senator Dean Smith’s same-sex marriage bill, conservative MPs last night held a phone hook-up to sign off on protection amendments for parental rights and anti-detriment laws which would be introduced as early as tomorrow.

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11/8/16: The NSW Commissioner of Police, Andrew Scipione attends a ceremony in Bowraville, NSW with the families of the 3 children murdered in Bowraville whose deaths have gone unsolved for almost 26 years. A young local aboriginal girl plays in the memorial for the 3 murdered children after everybody had left. John Feder/The Australian.

The long read: Box on Bowraville

The man chased the girl across the golf course, writes Dan Box. She was only young, new to the area and did not know him but a witness, Tanya Buchanan, later said she did. She said the chase took place in 1990, in Bowraville on the mid-north coast of NSW. Across five months between that year and the next, three children would go missing from the area. This week, the man Buchanan alleged had chased the girl will be the subject of an unprecedented hearing in the state’s appeal court, which will be asked to quash two previous court findings that he is not guilty of murder and order a retrial.

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BONN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 15: French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the COP 23 United Nations Climate Change Conference on November 15, 2017 in Bonn, Germany. The conference, which ends on November 17, has brought together 25,000 participants to discuss climate change-related issues and the progress signatory members are making towards fulfilling CO2 and other pollutants reductions. Many signatories of the Paris Agreement are failing to fulfill their commitments towards combating the global temperature rise. Recent data shows that global CO2 levels are again rising after having stagnated the last couple of years. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

The great global warming go-slow

Say one thing about Australia’s dawdle towards an agreed energy policy: it’s matching the pace of the global process, writes Alan Kohler in a key piece of analysis. A few days before the COAG Energy Council met last week to put off agreeing to the Government’s National Energy Guarantee, the latest UNFCCC conference of parties (COP23) wound up in Bonn with a similar outcome.

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Comment of the day

“It was simply madness to not carry diversion fuel for a remote airport like Norfolk, even more so given that the weather forecast was marginal.”

Brian, responding to Ean Higgins’s Inside Story on a pilot’s heroism, then lives destroyed over eight years of hell.