Good morning. Anthony Albanese will use a landmark speech today to promise “serious and rapid improvement” in economic equality for women as part of a shift in the government’s focus to a reform agenda. And a senior US official has warned that democracy itself is under threat in the November elections.
In a speech to mark 100 days since the 21 May election, the prime minister will tell the National Press Club that while the government is still in the “recovery” phase in the wake of the pandemic, he wants to move to “reform and renewal” over the course of the next term. “After a wasted decade, we are not wasting a day,” Albanese will say, according to excerpts of his draft speech. He lists cleaner and cheaper energy, better skills and training, cheaper childcare and a future made in Australia as his key priorities.
The number of people in Victoria’s prisons who have not been found guilty of a crime has grown more than 140% in just under a decade and now costs taxpayers more than $1m each day. Despite this, the Andrews government hasn’t reviewed changes to the state’s bail laws that have contributed to the increase, delaying the possibility of reform until after the November state election.
A top US official warns that the fate of free and fair elections in the US hangs in the balance in this November’s midterm contests. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, is urging Americans to pay attention to the once-sleepy down-ballot contests for secretary of state. “What we can expect from the extreme Republicans running across this country is to undermine free and fair elections for the American people,” she said.
Australia
The Australian Council of Social Services will use this week’s jobs and skills summit to push for a hefty increase to jobseeker payments and measures to get Australia’s 750,000 long-term unemployed people back into the workforce, including paid work trials. Lifting wages, productivity and easing skills shortages are top of the agenda at Thursday and Friday’s summit. Here’s everything you need to know about the event. And unions and the Business Council of Australia want to use it to revive the “key principles” of a controversial deal on enterprise bargaining that was dumped two years ago.
The Greens will move to legislate an energy transition authority when parliament resumes next month, as unions call on the government to amend its climate change legislation to reflect voters’ concerns.
In a town perched atop the rainforest hinterland of the Gold Coast, one of Australia’s most charismatic birds is suddenly and mysteriously dying.
The Albanese government has a decision to make: does it want people to think it takes the climate crisis seriously? Because at the moment it’s sending mixed messages, Adam Morton writes.
The world
Deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan have passed 1,000 since mid-June, officials have said, as a minister called the country’s deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe”.
Ukrainians are likely to experience the coldest winter in decades, the country’s gas chief has said, as the thermostats on its Soviet-era centralised heating systems are set to be switched on later and turned down.
A Republican congressman who has been one of the most vocal critics of Donald Trump has called out his party for criticising Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while continuing to defend the former president’s decision to take sensitive government information to his home at Mar-a-Lago.
The Arcade Fire singer Win Butler has been accused of sexual misconduct by four people who accuse him of taking advantage of his fame and their fandom, including sending unwanted sexual messages, between 2015 and 2020.
Recommended reads
Actors’ workouts and diets have become an integral part of the superhero journey but is our idea of a healthy body becoming skewed as a result? This is the question posed by Dejan Jotanovic as he takes a look at how the unstoppable rise of the Marvel body has changed our fitness regimes.
The expectation that the government will come to the rescue raises interesting questions about our own obligations, writes Ian Kemish, as he looks at travel, insurance, personal responsibility and when things go wrong in an unpredictable world.
Listen
Is Donald Trump back in Rupert Murdoch’s good books? At the end of July, it was reported that Fox News and other publications owned by Rupert Murdoch were starting to abandon their extensive coverage of Trump. However, after the FBI launched an unprecedented raid on his Mar-a-Lago home the former president was back to getting some favourable coverage, at least on Fox News. In today’s Full Story, Joan E Greve speaks to the former Republican congressional communications director Tara Setmayer about how in the long term this scandal could be beneficial to Trump.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Nick Kyrgios says it is “win win” drawing Thanasi Kokkinakis in the US Open first round as he grapples with home sickness, fatigue and the new-found pressures of being an in-form grand slam finalist.
Media roundup
The mandatory seven-day isolation period for people with Covid-19 could be scaled back to five days, 9News reports. The Sydney Morning Herald suggests South Sydney may have been tipped off about the isolation changes as they prepare to name Damien Cook for Friday night’s grudge match against the Sydney Roosters even though the match falls inside the hooker’s seven-day Covid quarantine period. And the Age talked to the so-called Scorcese of TikTok, who has spent two months creating dreamy snapshots of Melbourne.
Coming up
Richard Marles is in Europe to meet his defence counterparts.
Today is Equal Pay Day which seeks to “stop short-changing women”.
And if you’ve read this far …
‘I’d recommend a nice cheese and onion’: meet the ‘sommeliers’ of chocolate, oysters, mustard – and crisps.
Sign up
If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com.
Discover Australia Weekend
Every Saturday from 6am, enjoy early access to the best journalism planned for the weekend in one elegant app, plus a curated selection of the week’s news and analysis from Australia and the world.
