Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 20 December.

Top stories

In the shadow of a cabinet reshuffle yesterday, the government released a long-anticipated review of its climate policies which foreshadows loosening the current safeguard mechanism for pollution levels. Labor and the Greens blasted the new annual emissions projections, which predict Australia will increase its emissions all the way to 2030 and beyond, and called the Coalition’s action on climate change woefully inadequate. “When you look at those numbers you really do start to understand why [the government] would sneak them out, because they are a shocking set of numbers,” the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, said.

Butler also condemned the permissive signal on the safeguards mechanism in the review, as did the Greens’ climate spokesman, Adam Bandt, who noted the government wanted to weaken its “flawed” emissions reduction fund by allowing companies’ pollution baselines to be increased. “The data is devastating and the policy review is a travesty,” Bandt said. “Pollution is going up, we won’t meet even our paltry Paris targets and the government’s only plan is to make matters worse by allowing companies to buy dodgy permits from pig farms in China instead of cutting Australia’s emissions.”

Bill Shorten is facing some stormy weather at home in Melbourne – not yesterday’s thunder and lightning, but a factional fight that has plunged his own branch into turmoil. The brawl is compounding internal difficulties for the opposition leader after the ALP’s loss in last weekend’s Bennelong byelection. A breakaway group of right- and leftwingers want to overturn a stability pact, agreed between the former rightwing parliamentary powerbroker Stephen Conroy and the veteran leftwinger Kim Carr, which has maintained factional harmony in the Victorian branch for several years. A number of Victorian Labor sources have expressed dismay at the outbreak of factional jostling, one characterising the recent developments as “pure madness”.

An ex-chief of MI6 has warned that Brexit will cause a loss of British global influence not seen since the 1970s. Sir John Sawers has told British MPs they will need to figure out how to rebuild the country’s economy and international standing after leaving the EU. Calling for an urgent reprioritisation of resources post-Brexit, Sawers said: “We have to recognise a pretty stark reality faces us at the end of this process, and we have to rebuild from that.” Accused of doom and gloom by the Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani, Sawers bit back. “We have to acknowledge that Brexit is damaging our economy at the moment. Immediately after Brexit we suffered a 15% devaluation in our currency.” Sawers, a former UK ambassador to the UN, said the distraction of Brexit may have contributed to Britain failing to win a seat for the British candidate on the international court of justice. Theresa May had not been able to play the same international role in the world as the French president had in the past six months. “That is just a reality,” he said.

A Queensland farmer has been fined and ordered to restore native vegetation he cleared on his property, despite a significant media campaign claiming the farmer had done nothing wrong. After initial stories in the Guardian and the ABC last month reported allegations that the owners of Wombinoo, south-west of Cairns, had illegally cleared 60 hectares of native trees, there was a furore as the owners, a farmer lobby group and federal MPs lined up to reject the claim. However, the Queensland government has announced it had found the landholders had engaged in the unauthorised clearing of untouched vegetation. It said while the landholder had a clearing permit in place, approximately 132 hectares were cleared outside the approved area.

Justice Peter McClellan, who chaired Australia’s landmark royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, will retire in February. But the ceremony, in Sydney’s supreme court, will not be a standard judge-of-appeal farewell. There will be a “busload” of grateful child sexual abuse survivors to pay tribute to the man who oversaw the five-year inquiry, sensitively interviewing victims and survivors and their families, cross-examining CEOs, archbishops and rabbis and finally making more than 400 recommendations to keep children safer in future. “We are attending to show Peter McClellan’s family how much we valued him as chair of the commission, but also as a message to the nation,” says Leonie Sheedy, the CEO of Care Leavers’ Australasia Network told Guardian Australia. “He worked hard to get our trust and we respect his leadership, his commitment to the royal commission, and the way he led an amazing team of people.”

Sport

The underperforming English cricket team is facing a backlash post-Ashes, with senior team members felt to have let down the side. While younger talents such as Dawid Malan, Craig Overton and James Vince have surprised fans with their performances, where was the experience and steady hand at the top, asks Andy Bull.

The Guardian counts down the top 100 best footballers in the world this year – today, 100-71, featuring Marcus Rashford, Samuel Umtiti and Keylor Navas.

Thinking time

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The court system is ‘profoundly worrying’, said Ms Norton. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The recent case of Ms Norton has highlighted the “financial abuse” the family courts can inflict on litigants. The “eye-watering” charges of $860,000 accrued in the accrimonious dispute prompted the presiding judge to refer lawyers to the legal services commission. Justice Robert Benjamin noted the large volume of correspondence between solicitors that were attached to the affidavits. “Some of those letters were inflammatory and reflected the anger of the parties or one or other of them,” he said. “The letters were at times accusatory. They were often verbose and at times involved unnecessary tit-for-tat commentary ... solicitors are not employed to act as ‘postman’ to vent the anger and vitriol of their clients.” The law reform commission has launched a review into the family court system and aims to promote earlier and more cost-effective resolutions in family disputes. But Ms Norton is not optimistic. “The problem is the culture of the court,” she says. “The system is … profoundly worrying.”

Donald Trump has sat for 20 interviews with cable news channel Fox, and regularly live-tweets its programs, frequently claiming they are one of the few media sources that don’t produce “fake news”. Fox has returned the favour by covering the Russia investigation in a positive light for the president, and is a primary source of information for Republican supporters. The question is, asks Washington correspondent Ben Jacobs, whether Fox’s ardent defence of the president will have a political impact as the net draws tighter around the president’s closest advisers in the Russia investigation. What, if anything, can Fox news do then?

The Guardian has named The Handmaid’s Tale the best TV show of 2017. “The near-future horror of The Handmaid’s Tale arrived on our televisions with a precise timeliness that could be painful to witness,” writes Rebecca Nicholson of Netflix’s production of Margaret Atwood’s novel. “While it reflected the cultural and political conversations going on around it with a sometimes eerie prescience, ultimately this was a show about power, piety and corruption, and what happens under any ultra-conservative regime. A large part of the reason it felt so close is not necessarily what’s happening in the US right now, but what’s happening on the news every night, all around the world.” Check out the full pick of top 50 shows here.

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has once again accused the Washington Post of printing “fake news”, saying its source for an article on him talking about rescinding Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the supreme court “doesn’t exist”.

“A story in the @washingtonpost that I was close to “rescinding” the nomination of Justice Gorsuch prior to confirmation is FAKE NEWS. I never even wavered and am very proud of him and the job he is doing as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The unnamed sources don’t exist!” Trump tweeted in response.

Media roundup

The Herald Sun splashes with a very large and very concerned headline: “Booze price sting”, revealing Aussie drinkers could face paying more for their tipples under a “radical” healthcare plan. A slab of Victoria Bitter, which currently costs about $47, would jump to over $50 under the draft plan, the paper says.

Front page of the Herald Sun, 20 December 2017. Photograph: Twitter/ John Hanna

The Australian reports that Malcolm Turnbull has sparked a fresh round of infighting within his party by promoting conservative and regional MPs to the frontbench in a sweeping ministerial reshuffle.

And the ABC science team has pulled together a handy guide for hitting the beach safely this summer, including how to treat a jellyfish sting, how to identify and avoid rip currents and how to minimise your risk of being attacked by a shark.

Coming up

A special report on Victoria’s independent broad-based anti-corruption commission’s first five years will be tabled in parliament, marking the end of Stephen O’Bryan’s term as commissioner.

Western Australia’s treasurer, Ben Wyatt, will announce the state’s mid-year budget review, which is expected to show a deficit increase from September budget estimates.

Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Zendaya, Keala Settle and Australian director Michael Gracey will be in Sydney for the Australian premiere of a new film about PT Barnum called The Greatest Showman.

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