Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 17 October.

Top stories

“This is a policy that brings nothing but ruin.” A senior adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has accused Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, of destroying the chances of Middle East peace in order to win a byelection, after Morrison said he may recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Nabil Shaath said Palestinian officials were now lobbying Arab countries to reassess their trade and political ties with Canberra, hours after diplomats from 13 Middle Eastern and North African embassies in Australia held an emergency meeting on the issue.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Shaath, a former foreign minister, said Morrison’s announcement was a hostile action that destroyed the chances of peace. “If this is the way you do politics in the Middle East in order to win a byelection in Australia, then please allow me to be very negative towards the policy of that Australian government,” he said. Wentworth’s Jewish community appeared divided over the issue on Tuesday night at a forum featuring four of the electorate’s candidates and hosted by the Jewish Board of Deputies, writes Anne Davies.

Scott Morrison has put the prospect of asylum seekers being resettled in New Zealand on the table, but only if the government can secure the passage of legislation intended to ensure there is no backdoor entry to Australia. The prime minister is facing rising internal pressure over deteriorating conditions on Nauru, and with four government MPs now lobbying to get long-term detainees out of offshore detention. Bill Shorten is facing similar internal pressure, and on Tuesday pledged to introduce a private member’s bill designed to improve the process of medical transfers from Nauru.

Bernie Fraser says neoliberalism remains in vogue with the Coalition government, despite causing “misery and social polarisation”. The former Treasury secretary and Reserve Bank governor has made the comments in a presentation circulated to participants of the Australia Institute’s revenue summit in Canberra today. Fraser warns that society has become “less fair, less compassionate and more divided” and “more devoid of trust in almost every field of human activity” in the past 20 years.

“Pocahontas (the bad version), sometimes referred to as Elizabeth Warren, is getting slammed.” Donald Trump fired a volley of insults at Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday morning, 24 hours after she publicly released the results of a DNA test intended to prove her Native American ancestry. Referring to her by the racist moniker Pocahontas, Trump said: “She took a bogus DNA test and it showed that she may be 1/1024 [Native American], far less than the average American … ” He was joined in criticism of Warren by the Cherokee Nation, who late on Monday released a statement. “Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong,” said the Cherokee Nation secretary of state, Chuck Hoskin Jr.

The Morrison government greenlit a luxury camp in a Tasmanian world heritage area against expert advice, a leaked letter shows. The decision, signed by an environment department assistant secretary on 31 August on behalf of the new environment minister, Melissa Price, ruled the luxury camp on remote Halls Island in Lake Malbena was not a threat to matters of national environmental significance and did not need approval under federal laws. But a leaked letter tabled in Tasmanian parliament by the state Greens leader, Cassy O’Connor, shows the National Parks and Wildlife Advisory Council did not support the camp going ahead.

Sport

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about A-League 2018-2019, and Keisuke Honda is just one. It all kicks off on Friday night, but before it does, Jonathan Howcroft previews each team, starting with Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar, Central Coast Mariners, Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory.

Test cricket is all about momentum shifts and contrasts, and none more so than the first day of the second test between Pakistan and Australia in Abu Dhabi. After the long slow unfolding of the first Test’s classic draw, the day started in fast-forward, writes Geoff Lemon.

Thinking time

A photographer uses infrared light to saturate deserts with colour. After shooting countless retro pools and luxury vintage cars, Kate Ballis, a Melbourne-based artist who travels the globe photographing otherworldly landscapes and subjects, tried something new. She converted a digital camera to infrared – the spectrum of light emanating from plants sits just beyond the light spectrum visible to the naked eye – recasting unique desert-scapes such as the Joshua Tree and Sedona in the US and the Atacama desert in South America.

The Aboriginal Memorial is an art work and a political statement, writes Paul Daley. Thirty years after its creation the Aboriginal Memorial in the foyer of the National Gallery of Australia is more important than ever in its service of national memory. “As both an art work and a memorial it’s a profound aesthetic and political statement – a portal to a violent continental past and to a contemporary commonwealth of Australia that refuses to facilitate the called-for truth-telling of history or give federal amplification to Indigenous voice.” The question is whether it will remain the lone official memorial in Canberra to Aboriginal deaths in the frontier wars.

Meet the women tired of being written out of architecture history. Denise Scott Brown was an associate professor when she married Robert Venturi in 1967. She had taught at the universities of Pennsylvania and Berkeley, and initiated the first program in the new school of architecture at the University of California. The first sign that marriage had changed things came when an architect whose work she had reviewed said: “We at the office think it was Bob writing, using your name.” It was an indication of what was to come for the rest of her career.

Media roundup

A Ramsay Centre-funded course at Sydney University would be badged “western tradition’ rather than “western civilisation” in a bid to assuage concerns held by some academics about the proposed partnership, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Liberal party polling shows Kerryn Phelps ahead of Dave Sharma 55% to 45% in Wentworth on a two-party-preferred basis, reports the Australian.

On the ABC, news that one of the world’s rarest minerals – discovered just six times on Earth – has been discovered in WA. It could reveal Australia’s biggest crater.

Coming up

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, will be in Dubbo today, and will likely be invited to try a meat pie.

Parliament will sit again today, as 6,000 pink lady silhouettes are planted on the lawns of Old Parliament House to recreate the first “field of women” event 20 years ago.

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