Morning mail: NSW tries to avoid lockdown, Whitlam's 'malice', reef resilience

Good morning, this is Emilie Gramenz bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 15 July.

Top stories

The NSW government will enforce new compliance measures for pubs after the premier said lockdown was “an option we don’t want to take in New South Wales”. Gladys Berejiklian has agreed to implement the measures, which were developed in partnership with the Australian Hotels Association, despite acknowledging “the health advice was that indoor venues with a number of people posed the biggest risk”. She told the ABC’s 7.30 program that “we need to find a way in which we can coexist with the virus” as the state struggles to contain a cluster of cases linked to the Crossroads Hotel.

International students in Melbourne are bracing for more hardship after the city returned to a six-week lockdown. All Covid-19-positive residents of Melbourne’s most heavily infected aged care facility have been moved to hospital, as Victoria tackles 35 affected aged care services. Meanwhile, Australian government data has revealed that a quarter of applications for extra help with childcare fees took more than four weeks to process even before the pandemic unleashed a wave of economic pain. The data has fuelled fears that the scheme will struggle to cope with a surge in families requiring help during the recession.

Cities across the world are reimposing lockdowns as cases surge. India, the US and others are fighting rising infection rates, and the EU has decided to drop Serbia and Montenegro from its safe list of countries from which non-essential travel is allowed. Italy deployed dozens of soldiers to a town in Calabria to patrol apartment buildings where rescued migrants who tested positive for coronavirus have been placed under quarantine. In the US, while barred from major media appearances, Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top public health expert, is finding ways to address young people about the pandemic and its risks. Donald Trump’s aides continue to try to discredit him.

The former governor general John Kerr complained to Buckingham Palace that Gough Whitlam was “obsessively dominated by his dismissal and by malice towards me”. The private complaint in May 1976, months after the dismissal, is contained in a trove of letters between the Queen, her representatives and Kerr during his period at Yarralumla. Buckingham Palace has claimed the letters show the Queen supports Australians’ independence. They reveal she would not have approved of Prince Charles becoming governor general, at least until he managed to find himself a wife. They also show that the Queen’s secretary compared Bougainville’s bid for independence to Scotland. Katharine Murphy writes that the palace letters amount to an act of interference in Australian democracy.

Australia

The government will not commit to repaying more than 200 Centrelink debts raised using a method it says is unlawful and which it uncovered as part of a “historical review” of pre-robodebt cases. Documents released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws detail the outcome of a “random sample” of pre-2015 welfare debts the government services minister, Stuart Robert, ordered his agency to conduct last month.

A government-backed research program to make the Great Barrier Reef more resilient to global heating will spend $4.7m this financial year developing technologies that could shade corals and make clouds more reflective during heatwaves. This year the reef suffered its third mass coral bleaching event in five years.

The federal government has not yet paid a $3.3m grant for a feasibility study on the proposed Collinsville coal-fired power station in north Queensland because negotiations to establish a funding agreement with the proponent have stalled. It is more than a year since the study was announced.

Historians and medical experts have ridiculed claims by Brendan Nelson that the Australian War Memorial’s $498m expansion will improve veterans’ mental health. The claims were derided as “snake oil” and as “wishful thinking”.

The world

Ghislaine Maxwell has appeared in Manhattan federal court via video feed to plead not guilty to being involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls. She was denied bail after prosecutors painted her as a flight risk.

The UK health secretary will increase pressure on Facebook to tackle anti-vaccination propaganda. A report showed that almost 60 million people across the UK and US subscribe to such content on the social network.

A second prominent member of Catalan’s pro-independence movement has revealed he was warned that his mobile phone was targeted using spyware. The development is likely to bolster calls for an investigation into the use of hacking technology by Spanish authorities.

Recommended reads

The Covid-19 health crisis has improved, if only temporarily, women’s access to medical abortions. Gina Rushton writes that public provision of abortion is haphazard in Australia – your postcode still determines whether you fork out hundreds (or in the case of a surgical termination, often thousands of dollars) to cover the cost of a private provider. Changes to the Medicare rebates schedule include a temporary rebate for telehealth consultations for early medical abortion, and advocates are urging the government to make them permanent.

Do you have kids stretched to the limits of boredom during lockdown? Elissa Blake has created a guide to help you turn the living room into a stage. Make family lockdown fun with immersive audio, DIY crafts and short scripts to perform from Australia’s arts community.

The jobseeker rise changed my life, writes Bane Williams. “If you’ve never lived on jobseeker without a support network, it’s hard to understand and empathise with the concept that a $15 thing might seem so expensive that it can only be afforded maybe twice a year. What is probably harder to empathise with is that feeling of worthlessness that pervades you.”

Listen

What would Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank mean for Palestinians? Full Story examines it in today’s episode. Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed permanently seizing Palestinian territory by annexing swathes of the West Bank – a violation of international law.

Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.

Sport

If New Zealand offers Australia two or three places in a Trans-Tasman Super Rugby competition, administrators should grab the opportunity with both hands, writes Bret Harris. There has been speculation NZ only wants limited Australian participation in any future competition involving the two countries.

The court of arbitration for sport has dismissed the appeal of Keramuudin Karim, a former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, against his lifetime ban from football. Players came forward in 2018 to expose sexual, physical and emotional abuses of members of the Afghanistan women’s team.

Media roundup

A coronavirus cluster at a south-western Sydney pub has been genomically linked to Melbourne cases, according to the Age. The Australian reports that a monopolistic government retailer is forcing impoverished Torres Strait Islanders to pay as much as five times supermarket prices for staples including bread, chicken and instant coffee. The West Australian reports that a federal pilot program returning Aboriginal sacred objects held by overseas museums will be extended to 2024 and given nearly $10m.

Coming up

Gladys Berejiklian will give a Road to Recovery keynote address at 1pm.

The Ruby Princess special inquiry will hear closing submissions.

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