Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 3 September.

Top stories

The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, is putting climate change front and centre in a speech committing his party to cooperating with Labor and turfing out a government that “don’t deserve to govern”. Keen to avoid a repeat of 2010 when the Greens’ opposition to Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme helped to prevent the legislation from passing, the Victorian senator will outline a practical solution to climate change as his key policy priority.

Di Natale also warns against a politicising of race in the lead-up to the next federal election, urging: “Let’s not be diverted by allowing race-baiting and hate to be normalised and weaponised to turn neighbours against each other.” The Greens leader says an increase to Newstart, a publicly owned bank and energy company, and the introduction of a federal corruption commission are also key policies.

Last financial year two-thirds of the revenue of the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru came directly from the Australian government. Amid multiple sackings of judges and magistrates, the arrests and jailing of opposition politicians and the cancelling of passports for Nauru citizens, Anne Davies and Ben Doherty investigate the state of the Pacific nation, which is tied to Australia through an economic relationship many describe as one of client state and patron.

The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has been heckled as “Nazi scum” on the opening night of his Australian and New Zealand speaking tour, with protesters cordoned off by police in Perth. Ticket holders also received a torrid reception arriving at an event, where Farage spoke affectionately of his “friend” Donald Trump and praised Pauline Hanson for her anti-Islamic stance.

Vladimir Putin has faced a rare wave of protests across Russia, as well as criticism from the opposition party leader Gennady Zyuganov over mooted pension reform. Thousands took to the streets at coordinated protests around the country after Putin took personal responsibility for a measure that sees the pension age raised to 65 for men and 60 for women.

A landmark federal court ruling has found a casual worker entitled to annual leave, prompting calls from Australia’s peak recruitment body for a new worker category “that sits between permanent and casual”. Paul Skene, a truck driver, was ruled entitled to annual leave because of a regular and continuous pattern of work, in a decision welcomed by Sally McManus of the ACTU. “We need to change the rules so that casual work is for casual workers, and people who work regular hours on an ongoing basis are not forced to go without leave and other entitlements.”

Sport

Romelu Lukaku has fired Manchester United to a pressure-relieving 2-0 win at Burnley in the Premier League, on a night when Tottenham slipped up against Watford and Arsenal edged a five-goal thriller against Cardiff.

The defending champion, Rafael Nadal, has progressed to the quarter finals of the US Open, where Austria’s Dominic Thiem awaits. Follow Australia’s Ash Barty, Serena Williams and Sloane Stephens as play continues on our live blog.

After 323 NRL games Kangaroos, Maroons and Cowboys legend, Johnathan Thurston has retired. Joe Gorman considers his legacy.

Thinking time

“Something is fundamentally broken in the relationship between government and citizens.” That’s the view from the bush, writes Gabrielle Chan in her new book, Rusted Off, from a people who have been taken for granted by the Coalition and ignored for decades by Labor. “The neglected class comprises the people who service the farms, look after the very young and the very old, keep the schools going, keep the hospitals running, do the council work (in the streets as opposed to sitting as councillors). They can see an educated elite on both the left and the right looking after themselves and shouting at each other in a conversation that is largely held above their heads, away from their main streets.”

Three years after the European migration crisis rocked Sweden, Europe’s “most liberal nation” heads to an election, with polls suggesting the far right could gain up to 20% of the vote, and the ruling centre-left Social Democrats facing a record slump. As John Henley writes from Stockholm, a failure to adequately address the issue of immigration has fuelled resentment. “Since the early 1990s, opinion polls have consistently shown more people wanting to reduce numbers than increase them,” says a political scientist, Anders Sannerstadt. “But that was never reflected in official policy.”

A new French book laying bare the working conditions of stylists and young designers has opened up the secretive profession in a dramatically public way. Written by the academic Giulia Mensitieri, The Most Beautiful Job in the World’s findings – that fashion, the country’s second-biggest industry, exploits most of the creatives who work in it – were quickly picked up by the media when it was published earlier this year. The resulting headlines included: “The ruthless world of fashion”; “Fashion’s dirty underside”; and “An extremely wealthy industry founded on unpaid work”.

Media roundup

A street brawl in Melbourne overnight has left Victoria’s top brass facing heavy criticism, writes the Australian, after one man was left in a critical condition after being struck by a car. Australia’s biggest listed honey company faces accusations of selling “fake honey”, reports the Age, in a special investigation by Fairfax and the ABC, after extensive testing by an international lab that specialises in honey fraud detection. And “the Territory’s favourite snow coloured salty”, an albino croc called Pearl, has been sighted, writes the NT News, to the relief of croc-watchers after several months without sightings.

Coming up

The inquest continues today into the death of Wayne Fella Morrison who died after an altercation with prison guards.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release data on the consumption of alcohol in Australia.

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