Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 16 March.

Top stories

Labor goes into the final 48 hours of the Batman byelection campaign believing the critical contest is line ball, with voter sentiment improving in the final week, according to private party research. Labor sources have told Guardian Australia that polling this week has Ged Kearney neck-and-neck with the Greens candidate Alex Bhathal – an improvement on the research the week before, which suggested Labor’s primary vote was too low to win.

But while key strategists are closing out the campaign in an optimistic mood, party veterans have also expressed caution about how voter turnout will ultimately affect Saturday’s result, given turnout is lower in byelection contests than it is in general elections, and the difficulty of predicting how Liberal supporters will cast their votes without a candidate in the race. The Liberals polled 20% in Batman at the last federal election. The Greens, while being front runners, have been plagued by infighting throughout the campaign. Party sources have acknowledged that internal tensions have registered with voters and not helped the Batman offensive.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over all documents related to Russia and other topics he is investigating, the New York Times has reported. It is the first known order directly related to Trump’s business empire. Trump tweeted that he has had “nothing to do with Russia – no deals, no loans, no nothing”. The Democrats have alleged the future president’s private company was “actively negotiating” a business deal in Moscow with a sanctioned Russian bank during the 2016 election campaign. It comes as the US accused Russia of a wide-ranging cyber assault on its energy grid and other key infrastructure, and stepped up sanctions on Russian intelligence for its interference in the 2016 elections.

A trial of shark nets on the New South Wales north coast has caught just a single target shark in the past two months, while continuing to trap or kill dolphins, turtles, and protected marine life. A bull shark was caught in the nets around Ballina, while 55 other animals were either killed or trapped. Environmentalists said the data released on the nets, which span five beaches, was more evidence of their ineffectiveness. “How many more months of damning data will it take for government to finally realise this experiment is an utter failure, and shut it down?” Humane Society International marine scientist Jessica Morris said.

The US, UK, Germany and France have united to condemn the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter, issuing a rare joint statement deploring the “assault on UK sovereignty”. The unified comment from the four leaders follows extensive UK efforts to drum up international support for its response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The statement said the use of novichok “constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the second world war”.

The Coalition’s espionage bill still threatens whistleblowers, bloggers, lawyers and people who innocently receive national security information, the Law Council of Australia has warned. Its president, Morry Bailes, will tell the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security at a hearing on Friday that further changes are needed so people who do not intend harm to national security are not punished. The lawyers’ peak body joins the media union and the country’s top media organisations in continuing to lobby for the bill to be dropped or significantly amended, despite the Turnbull government agreeing to a host of changes to protect public interest reporting.

Sport

Gareth Southgate has said he remains fully focused on preparing England for the World Cup, despite the political tensions between the UK and the tournament hosts Russia, and some calling for the England side to boycott the tournament.

Max Rushden and co dissect Manchester United’s and Chelsea’s exit from the Champions League in the Football Weekly podcast, and in the last-chance saloon, Saints go for Mark Hughes.

Thinking time

A new documentary film on kangaroos is shocking and gruesome, but is its analysis sound asks Luke Buckmaster? We see emotive images of the animals majestically hopping across a sun-kissed landscape, contrasted with subsequent, horrific images of their body parts and mangled corpses. The makers of Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story knew their documentary was going be controversial, just not this controversial. The film sometimes lacks rigorous analysis, such as suggesting kangaroos are endangered, but without backing this up with verifiable facts.

Brigid Delaney thought she was getting away from it all on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. And under the water was indeed an amazing experience. But above the surface she felt a familiar dread as a succession of people offered opinions and prejudices she profoundly disliked. The guide seemed to doubt bleaching on the reef, in the face of respectable scientific evidence; and other holidaymakers either were or sounded Islamophobic or homophobic. “For the third snorkel I threw myself off the side of the boat with a sort of depressed flop,” she writes. “Who were all these people with these horrible views? If the boat was representative of mainstream society ... then my Guardian colleague and I really were out on a limb.”

“Quiet, lazy and gentle” – that’s how Australia’s first greyhound adoption cafe describes the former racing dogs that are looking for new homes. The cafe will serve the dual purpose of introducing people to greyhounds, and introducing foster greyhounds, who have often had minimal human contact, to a broad range of humans. About 2,700 greyhounds were adopted through a range of programs in 2016-17, but in the same period, 1,429 dogs – 54% fewer than the previous year – were euthanised. Can this cafe find forever homes for these gentle pets?

What’s he done now?

Trump has doubled down on his incorrect insistence that America has a trade deficit with Canada, leaving the Washington Post, among many others, to again call out his statement as a lie. He tweeted: “We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive). P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S.(negotiating), but they do…they almost all do…and that’s how I know!” It comes after he bragged that he made up facts in a meeting with Trudeau.

Media roundup

The Hobart Mercury reports that Tasmania’s new House of Assembly will be the first Australian state parliament to have a female majority.

The Age and Herald focus on Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s support for the idea of Australia joining the Association of South East Asian Nations, or Asean.

At the Conversation, Michelle Grattan says Bill Shorten has scored own goals on tax and Adani as the Batman byelection looms.

Coming up

Malcolm Turnbull will meet the Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Asean-Australia summit in Sydney. The two are due to hold a joint press conference later on Friday.

The Cambodian community will protest at Hyde Park in Sydney at 6pm against the visit of Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen. Cambodia’s democracy has been crippled with the country’s main opposition party dissolved last year and the opposition leader jailed. Independent news outlets have also been shut down. Hun Sen recently vowed to beat up protesters if they burned effigies of him.

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