Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 30 April.

Top stories

Several prominent US political reporters have joined Republicans in criticising comedian Michelle Wolf’s speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner, in which she roasted Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other members of Donald Trump’s team. Andrea Mitchell of NBC News called for an apology and two key New York Times reporters expressed distress.

Maggie Haberman, who has written some of the most excoriating dispatches on the Trump White House and has been attacked for it by the president, leapt to Sanders’ defence, praising her for absorbing the Wolf blitz rather than walking out. Peter Baker, the Times’s chief White House correspondent, said: “I don’t think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight.” But others defended Wolf and decried what they saw as the inability of so many people to take a joke. The actor and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, one of Trump’s bêtes noires, slammed those who called Wolf’s speech vulgar by replying: “It’s a roast – truth telling is required.”

Australia’s education system has “failed a generation” of schoolchildren, a landmark report has found, with student outcomes declining in reading, science and maths over the past 18 years. The review, chaired by businessman David Gonski, found Australia needed to overhaul its “industrial model” of school education, declaring it no longer helped students maximise their learning growth. It said Australia needed to shift away from a year-based curriculum to a curriculum expressed as “learning progressions”, independent of year or age.

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Members of the UN security council have expressed dismay at the “overwhelming” suffering they encountered in the refugee camps in Bangladesh, home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing Myanmar. The delegation came to hear the first-hand the experiences of 700,000 Rohingya refugees subjected to a campaign of violence, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar’s military since August 2017. Dozens of Rohingya refugees made emotional pleas for the UN to hear their stories, and women wept as they recounted horrific experiences. The delegation will fly to Myanmar on Monday for talks with with Aung San Suu Kyi.

Increasing compulsory superannuation payments from 9.5% to 12% could hurt wage growth and cut pensions for low-income workers, according to a new report by the Grattan Institute. It has called on the government to abandon the bipartisan consensus to raise the super guarantee by 2025, saying compulsory contributions are ultimately funded by lower wages. Since pensions are indexed to wage growth, the report warns that increases in the super guarantee to 12% could cost singles $460 and couples $640 each year in pension payments.

The massive ExxonMobil-led liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea, backed by a $500m Australian government loan, has failed to deliver on a promised economic boom for the country local population, a new report has found. The study, commissioned by research group Jubilee Australia, found the PNG people would have been better off if the project had never happened. The report has prompted renewed criticism of the Australian loan and questions around the company’s offshore tax arrangements.

Sport

Daniel Ricciardo has spectacularly crashed out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as he tried to overtake his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen, prompting fury from the team’s manager. “They are both to blame,” Christian Horner said. “They have been reminded that they are part of a team, they are highly paid individuals and have to act with the team’s interests at heart, not just their own.” Lewis Hamilton won the race after Valtteri Bottas punctured while leading with two laps to go.

Max Gawn was abused by an angry Essendon fan on Sunday, but this incident is now much less common than players being abused online, writes Craig Little. Jake Lever this week revealed he had deleted his Twitter account after a barrage of abuse following the lacklustre start to his career at Melbourne.

Thinking time

Australians looking for home-grown stories could face “screens of darkness” and wall-to-wall foreign imports if the Turnbull government dismantles the complex system that underpins Australia’s film and television industry, writes Anna Broinowski. With an increasingly globalised landscape, the industry is fighting for survival as deregulation proposals threaten to send it back to the early 1960s, when Australian stories took up 1% of the airwaves. So what can be done to protect local projects and productions?

Spike Lee’s radical She’s Gotta Have It was closer to French new wave than anything that has passed as “black” cinema before, writes Steve Rose. Its sex-positive debut has become a coming-of-age classic – but it was no easy feat. “The budget was so tight he had to get the crew to save empty drinks cans to get the deposits back. His producer spent every night on the telephone after the day’s shooting, phoning around friends begging for donations. And Lee then had to fight the censors (whom he felt were racially biased) and make cuts to the sex scenes to avoid an X certificate.”

Refugees from the ethnic minorities of Myanmar have settled in Wyndham, in Melbourne’s west, but beneath the surface of their close-knit community lies isolation and trauma. This picture essay explores the refugees’ lives in Australia and the project at the Wyndham Community & Education Centre, which teaches the refugees the history of Australia, to help give them a sense of place and feel more at home.

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump boycotted the White House Correspondents dinner for the second year in a row – but that didn’t stop him taking a swipe at the event on Twitter. “Washington, D.C., just didn’t work. Everyone is talking about the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner was a very big, boring bust...the so-called comedian really ‘bombed.’”

Media roundup

The Australian takes another look at the troubled town of Larrimah in the Northern Territory, where pensioner Paddy Moriarty disappeared without a trace earlier this year. The Daily Telegraph splashes with a crime wave on Sydney streets, which it says is being fuelled by foreign syndicates who consider the city a soft touch and have no fear of the police. An animal welfare expert who advises the Tasmanian government is quitting in protest at “completely disappointing” investigations of animal mistreatment, the ABC reports, including the death of 16 polo ponies in the back of a truck in January.

Coming up

Bill Shorten will deliver his pre-budget speech in Sydney today, outlining his priorities for Australia’s economic future.

Hearings begin in Brisbane in the defamation case between the Wagner family and Alan Jones. The Wagners are suing Jones, his employer Harbour Radio and News Corp journalist Nick Cater over allegations about their quarry’s role in the 2011 Lockyer Valley floods.

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