Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 1 February.

Top stories

Malcolm Turnbull delivers an agenda-setting speech in regional Queensland today, focusing on corporate and personal tax cuts to stimulate the economy. The prime minister will talk up the prospect of wages growth – because “the laws of supply and demand have not been suspended”, according to speech notes seen by Guardian Australia. And he plans to use the speech to argue he has delivered on the rationale he offered when he took the Liberal party leadership from Tony Abbott in 2015 – “to provide the economic leadership that Australia needed”.

With the Coalition trailing Labor in major opinion polls for the whole of 2017, a slump exacerbated by internal ill-discipline and infighting – including frequent public interventions by Abbott – Turnbull will frame the new political year as a time when the government needs to “stay the course”. “Despite Canberra being a hothouse which thrives on pessimism and political distractions, we delivered on many of our plans last year, and we have more to do now,” he will say.

Unnecessary greyhound deaths are still occurring at levels seen before New South Wales repealed its industry ban, internal figures reveal. Details of greyhound deaths in NSW suggest the industry is making little progress on its August 2016 guarantee that “no greyhound will be unnecessarily euthanised”. Data obtained by the Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi suggests unnecessary euthanasia has continued largely unabated, with 330 greyhounds euthanised between April last year, when the ban was formally repealed, and 31 December. That’s a rate of about 1.3 deaths per day.

The refugee emergency along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border is a crisis of the young, with generations-long repercussions for the region, and the world, writes immigration correspondent Ben Doherty. Since 25 August more than 668,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar for camps over the Bangladesh border. Nearly 400,000 of those are children, a figure that will rise as new families arrive still, and infants are born in the camps. Majuma Begum, 18, says soldiers came in the darkness to her village of Boli Bazaar and she watched the soldiers work systematically through it, torching homes and executing those who did not, or could not, flee. Seven months pregnant, she ran. The boy she gave birth to in the teaming refugee camp is called Anwar:his name means light.

A man repeatedly abused as a child at the Turana Boys’ Home and at a Salvation Army institution in Victoria has implored the prime minister not to exclude criminals who were victims of childhood sexual abuse from accessing a national redress scheme. National redress scheme legislation has been referred to a Senate inquiry over concerns about the opt-in nature for some institutions, the amount of redress available, and anger that survivors who went on to commit serious crimes would be barred. In a submission to the inquiry, a man who chose to remain anonymous wrote: “I would have been all right in life if it hadn’t been for the sexual abuse committed against me, and rejections by the system, so how can you, Mr Turnbull, judge me as not being eligible for compensation on the grounds of criminality?I was a system-made problem.”

The BBC is “in real trouble” over the equal pay row that has rocked the organisation, Carrie Gracie has said in extremely damaging evidence to MPs. Gracie resigned as China editor earlier this month in protest at the “secretive and illegal” pay culture at the BBC. “I knew I’d give the China job every last ounce of my skin and stamina. I knew I would do that job at least as good as any man,” she said. “I insisted on equal pay. I thought I had won a commitment to pay parity when I set off to China which is why I got such a shock [when BBC salaries were revealed].”. Her comments will increase the pressure on the BBC over pay equality, which began when the broadcaster’s pay list revealed that two-thirds of its best paid on-air staff were men, and Gracie’s male colleagues in equivalent roles were earning 50% more than her.

Sport

Hannah Mouncey has every reason to say AFLW is not inclusive, given she was barred the right to nominate in the draft. Howeverher experience of women’s football is as a game that embraces diversity in all its forms. In AFLW, the AFL has been gifted a product where inclusivity is key to success.

German football star Mesut Özil is set to bolster Arsenal’s side by agreeing to a new £350,000-a-week deal. The midfielder will sign on to the club for three years, and may soon be joined by Jack Wilshere if he and Arsenal sign too – a deal which is close.

Thinking time

What does it take to take to help others with little expectation of reward? Our new series, The Altruists, focuses on those who do just that. Brisbane GP Ai-lene Chan was raised with a social conscience, and when she discovered the conditions of the refugees stranded on Christmas Island and Nauru after working there, she knew she had to speak up.

Drugs containing codeine will no longer be available from pharmacies without a prescription in Australia, with the ban affecting brands such as Nurofen Plus and Panadeine. This restriction is in keeping with our advanced understanding of pain and its best management, writes Malcolm Hogg a specialist in anaesthesia and pain medicine. “When I started specialising in pain medicine, opioids such as codeine and morphine were the mainstays of managing severe acute and cancer-related pain. As usage broadened, the benefits were limited, particularly when high doses were used, and the social concerns of misuse and addiction emerged.”

Consumer price index figures released this week show an inflation rate well below Reserve Bank targets. But if you think that equates to reduced pressure in cost of living, you’d be wrong. “Most of the biggest prices rises were for essential items such as health, housing (including rents and utilities) and transport,” writes Greg Jericho. “This lack of a growth in wage rises will also mean that households will continue to feel the effects of cost of living rises, even as overall inflation remains historically low.”

What’s he done now?

Despite repeatedly applauding his own speech, Donald Trump seemed “standoffish and low-energy,” writes Ted Widmer for the Washington Post, analysing the president’s state of the union address on Wednesday . “He woke up a little when he needed to enlarge the threat posed by nasty but regional actors — MS-13 and North Korea. He was half-asleep when mumbling about genuine global rivals – Russia”.

Media roundup

The Australian reports that Asio has warned foreign spy activity and espionage in Australia is higher than at any time during the cold war. The Herald Sun splashes with the accidental release of a serious criminal on remand by Victorian police after they “bungled” his paperwork. The man spent a night on the outside before turning himself in after his mother phoned police to check if her son was meant to be out. Asio officers entered on ABC offices in Brisbane and Canberra overnight to secure classified documents, installing safes (which the ABC has access to) to improve security around the thousands of top-secret and classified files, which were found discarded in a locked filing cabinet in an op-shop.



Coming up

The Australian Electoral Commission will release its latest update of political donation information. Today’s release will include full amount of Malcolm Turnbull’s donation to the Liberal party just before 2016 election, among other donations.



The new Socceroos coach Bert van Marwijk will hold a media conference with Football Federation Australia chairman Steven Lowy and chief executive David Gallop.



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