Good morning, this is Stephen Smiley bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 22 August.

Top stories

The Vatican has invoked Cardinal George Pell’s “right to appeal”, after the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be convicted of child sexual abuse on Wednesday lost his bid to have his conviction quashed. In a brief statement, the Vatican reiterated that Pell maintained his innocence and that it was now his “right to appeal to the high court”. “At this time, together with the church in Australia, the Holy See confirms its closeness to the victims of sexual abuse,” the statement also said. No mention was made of stripping Pell of his cardinal title.

Queensland Labor is set to endorse a change to its official platform to become more coal friendly, asserting the party’s support for the mining industry and its importance to the state. Delegates from Labor’s industrial left, and from the party’s right faction, are expected to overwhelmingly support a proposal at this weekend’s state conference, to be attended by the federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, to add a new chapter to the party’s official platform. The move to highlight support for the coal sector comes after Labor suffered a statewide swing against it of more than 4% in the May federal election.

The energy market operator has used its latest 10-year forecast of reliability in Australia’s power supply to highlight the urgent need for more investment in dispatchable energy and transmission infrastructure. In a frank assessment, the chief executive of Aemo, Audrey Zibelman, says the energy market operator has been engaged in “reactive action” to ensure the risks of blackouts are reduced during the summer peaks. But she points out that current methods of securing additional resources are imposing higher costs on consumers.

Discrimination is the most significant factor driving the gender pay gap in Australia, according to a report by KPMG. Researchers attributed gender discrimination to 39% of the gender pay gap, and noted its influence on the gap has increased since 2014. Other factors include: years of not working because of interruptions, primarily child care and caring for elderly relatives – which made a 25% contribution; and occupational and industrial segregation – meaning unequal distribution of men and women in occupations and the over-representation of women in lower paid positions and industries – which accounted for 17%.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Danish PM has reacted to the cancelled Trump visit: ‘Preparations were in full swing.’ Photograph: Mads Claus Rasmussen/EPA

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said she is surprised and disappointed that Donald Trump has called off his planned visit to the country, after Copenhagen refused to sell Greenland to the US. Many Danes had assumed the story of Trump’s desire to buy the island was meant in jest, but he appears to have been serious – or at least offended by how firmly it has been rebuffed.

Angela Merkel has challenged Boris Johnson to come up with a solution to avert a no-deal Brexit “in the next 30 days”, signalling cautious optimism that a deal could still be struck.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has accused environmental groups of setting fire to the Amazon, as he tries to deflect growing international criticism of his failure to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.

An Iranian-backed militia in Iraq has accused the US and Israel of involvement in an alleged drone strike on a munitions warehouse near Baghdad, the latest in a series of mysterious explosions at similar bases.

And Africa is on the verge of being declared polio-free, after three years without any recorded cases. Nigeria marked three years without a wild polio case yesterday, which the World Health Organization described as a “major milestone”.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An anti-Adani coalmine protest at Airlie Beach, Queensland. Richard Flanagan writes that Australia’s conservatives have barely changed in half a century. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

In 1971 the Liberal Billy McMahon – routinely judged the worst Australian prime minister in history, an achievement not to be underestimated in a nation where the worst routinely rule – created a new portfolio: Environment, Arts and Aboriginal Affairs. Nobody wanted the job: given it, Peter Howson observed that he was responsible for “trees, boongs and poofters”. What’s changed among our conservative rulers over the last half century? On the evidence of the shame Scott Morrison visited on all Australians last week at the Pacific Islands Forum, Richard Flanagan writes, not very much.

Donald Trump appears indifferent to the short-term economic impact of his increasingly heated trade war with China. On Tuesday he said, “Whether it’s good for our country or bad for our country, short term, it had to be done.” But as Greg Jericho writes, for Australia, since the GFC, the situation has become more complicated: “For Australia anything that hits China’s economic growth is bad news, given how important it is to our economy. In effect what has happened over the past 20 years is that private investment and exports have swapped in importance – during the mining boom, investment was the key; now it is exports. And so, with the president of the United States now apparently trying to soften up his supporters for a recession, Australia will be hoping against hope that we don’t fall into a recession because of one man’s ego and economic ignorance.”

Sport

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Australian cricket team at a training session. Photograph: Jon Super/AP

Act III of the Ashes may bring some new protagonists, with both the England and Australia openers under scrutiny. Jason Roy’s form has England pondering their order, while there’s talk Australia may juggle their bowlers.

The meeting rooms at law firm Gilbert + Tobin, high in the Barangaroo complex in Sydney, are named after historically significant locations. It’s an apt place to interview the former Matildas vice captain Moya Dodd, now a partner at the firm: she has been a firsthand observer of countless significant moments in football.

Thinking time: ‘Never piss off a poet’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Colonialism is a theme that comes up often in the works of Selina Tusitala Marsh, who in 2016 recited her poem Unity in Westminster Abbey. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

She blows in like a song carried on a powerful current: a wild-haired woman, larger than life, carrying a tall carved stick. The stick is a tokotoko, a Māori symbol of status and authority, given to Selina Tusitala Marsh when she became New Zealand’s poet laureate in 2017. She carries it everywhere, a talisman not of war, but of words. And Marsh’s words have impact: she belongs to a generation that has seen poetry move away from a privileged white male enclave to something of a global revival.

Colonialism is a theme that comes up often in her work. In 2016 she recited a poem, Unity, in Westminster Abbey – she had been commissioned to write it for the Queen. All the royal family were there, along with numerous heads of state. She turned to introduce herself to the man next to her, holding out her hand. “He looks at me, then down at my hand, then averts his gaze,” she wrote later. She looked up, and there was Alexandra Smith, the wife of the New Zealand high commissioner Sir Lockwood Smith, mouth opened, brow furrowed. (“I can’t believe he did that to you! I’m so offended!” Smith later said to Marsh. “How rude!”). The encounter inspired her poem Pussycat. The moral of the story, she says, is, “Never piss off a poet.”

Media roundup

The ABC reports that an Australian mining company, Lynas, has been told to “get lost” and “go back to Australia”, amid an ongoing row about hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste piling up in Malaysia. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald report that the ABC’s board will meet on Thursday to discuss a range of cost-cutting measures, as the broadcaster faces $84m less in funding over three years. And the Daily Telegraph reports that the City of Sydney is stepping up efforts to combat a disease spread by rats, leptospirosis, which has killed seven dogs and infected several humans.

Coming up

Bernard Collaery, the lawyer for the former spy Witness K when he blew the whistle on Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste’s cabinet discussions, is due in the ACT supreme court as he fights the charge against him.

The former military lawyer David McBride is also due to reappear at the same court facing charges for leaking sensitive documents to the ABC.

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