Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 17 May.

Top stories

The last day of the federal election campaign takes on a very different complexion after the death of Bob Hawke on Thursday. The former Labor leader, prime minister from 1983 to 1991, died peacefully at home at the age of 89. National and international leaders paid tribute, remembering him as a towering figure in the labour movement, and a reforming PM whose governments modernised Australia’s economy and introduced wide-ranging social reform. Hawke had been too frail to attend Labor’s campaign launch but was political to the last: his final public statement was an open letter urging a vote for a Labor government under Bill Shorten in Saturday’s election. Shorten thanked Hawke for his life’s service and said the party had lost its “greatest son”. One discordant note among the tributes was sounded by Tony Abbott, who was pilloried on social media for describing Hawke as a leader who “went against the Labor grain” and who “had a Labor heart, but a Liberal head”.

Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison made their final set-piece TV appearance in the election campaign on the ABC’s 7.30 program last night, just as Hawke’s death was announced. As an Ipsos poll put Labor’s two-party-preferred lead at 51%-49%, neither would say whether they would stand down in the event of defeat in Saturday’s election. Earlier in the day Shorten had invoked Hawke’s predecessor Gough Whitlam at a nostalgic rally in western Sydney. Meanwhile, the Australia Institute has predicted that Clive Palmer’s colossal advertising spend may not be enough to win him a Senate seat, based on polls of upper house voting intention. And a last-ditch effort to win votes in key seats in South Australia and Victoria has prompted both major parties to make changes to their policies on oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

More than 400m pieces of plastic have been found on a remote Australian island territory in the Indian Ocean, in a haul of debris including bottles, cutlery, bags, straws and 977,000 shoes, a new study has found. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are among the most remote places on Earth, and the study, published in the journal Nature, concluded that the volume of trash pointed to the exponential increase of global plastic polluting the world’s oceans. The lead author, Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania, said remote islands without large populations were “like canaries in a coalmine and it’s increasingly urgent that we act on the warnings they are giving us”. The study found the quantity of debris buried up to 10cm beneath the beach was 26 times greater than the amount visible.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theresa May exits No 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for her departure as prime minister in the first week of June, leading MPs to believe she will trigger a leadership contest imminently. Boris Johnson has said “of course” he would be a contender when there is a vacancy.

Iran’s most prominent military leader met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned. The meeting has led to a frenzy of diplomatic activity between US, British and Iraqi officials who are trying to banish the spectre of clashes between Tehran and Washington.

Three Britons and a South African have died in a plane crash near Dubai international airport, Emirati authorities said. A UK-registered light aircraft carrying the four people came down about three miles south of the airport.

King Albert II, who abdicated from the Belgian throne six years ago, is to be fined €5,000 ($8,000) for every day that he refuses to undergo a DNA test to disprove claims he fathered a child during an extramarital affair in the 1960s.

The Austrian government has warned internet users to shun an online cow-kissing challenge, calling it a dangerous nuisance. The Austrian agriculture minister, Elisabeth Köstinger, said: “Pastures and meadows are not petting zoos – actions like these could have serious consequences.”

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mel Gibson is to star in a comedy called Rothchild

A buffet of Mel Gibson movies is being shopped to apparently voracious buyers at the Cannes film festival, writes a disbelieving Marina Hyde. “Arguably the most eye-catching of Mel’s upcoming works is a comedy called Rothchild. But of course! What else?

“As you’ll recall from the roadside lecture a drunken Mel once delivered to two California Highway Patrol officers, ‘the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world’. Yet, you have to say, they’re doing a pretty terrible job of controlling Hollywood, given that Mel Gibson not only has a slate of talked-about projects on the go – despite his numerous racist, sexist, homophobic, violence-threatening, violence-admitting, Holocaust-questioning meltdowns over the years – but that this particular one sees him play the paterfamilias of the “Rothchild” family, an astronomically rich New York clan.

Alabama’s abortion ban is about keeping poor women down, writes Emma Brockes. For the 25 white, male state senators voting for it, this is not about the foetus but about maintaining the social order. “No one at this point in the US abortion debate can believe that the foetus is the focus. It’s not about the foetus, it’s about the woman. An abortion ban as radical as the one voted for in Alabama is about the elimination of women – particularly poor women – as a threat to the social order; it is a measure designed to ensure that poor people stay poor, and women stay home.”

Sport

Nick Kyrgios has walked out of the Italian Open after hurling a chair on to the court during his second-round match against Norway’s Casper Ruud. After Ruud broke back to make it 1-1 in the deciding set, Kyrgios was given a game penalty, apparently for swearing at a line judge, and promptly erupted. Only a day earlier Kyrgios had unloaded on some of the tour’s biggest stars, saying Novak Djokovic had a “sick obsession with being liked” and Rafael Nadal was “super salty”.

On Sunday Perth Glory could win their elusive first A-League championship, or, for coach Tony Popovic, it could be a fourth grand final defeat. Jonathan Howcroft has the preview.

Thinking time: Popular forever, Bob Hawke

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barrie Cassidy with the then Australian prime minster Bob Hawke, in Red Square, Moscow, in 1987.

Bob Hawke was an intellectual larrikin who was “just as dedicated to forging economic accords as he was to picking winners at the track”, writes his friend and colleague Barrie Cassidy, who worked as a senior press secretary to Hawke in the 1980s. “The man was as much at ease with world leaders as he was with punters at the races – persuasive and committed when he needed to be, yet a good listener at the cabinet table. He was a hard worker and an excellent judge of trends; comfortable with people, and they with him. And he had a strong moral compass. But not all of his achievements were show-stopping. When he entered office the high school completion rate for students was 30%, and by his departure this had risen to 70%. He was also anti-mining in Antarctica, anti-apartheid, and passionate about stamping out racism wherever and whenever he saw it, winning him widespread respect.”

Hawke was the exception to at least two iron rules, Cassidy writes. First, that no one comes back from a serious drinking problem with their faculties unimpaired. “And the second is an exception to a rule once articulated by John Howard: that no politician is popular forever. That is one of the great ironies of politics. Howard may be right, generally. But somehow I reckon Bob Hawke was never more popular than he was in his fading years. That’s when people reflected on what once was, and may never be again.”

Media roundup

Every Australian paper has its own take on Bob Hawke this morning. “Fearless reformer” on the front of the Sydney Morning Herald. “Here’s to Bob” at the West Australian; “See Ya Mate” at the Hobart Mercury; “One of a kind” in the Advertiser; “Larrikin. Leader. Legend” in both the Courier-Mail and the Daily Telegraph, which also use the same picture of Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget; and simply “Legend” in the Herald Sun.

Coming up

Justice Melissa Perry will hand down her judgment in the NRL player Jack de Belin’s case against the ARL Commission and NRL after he was stood down while facing sexual assault charges.

The death of the Australian Kirsty Boden is expected to be examined at the inquest into the London Bridge terrorist attack.

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