Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 6 August.

Top stories

The race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, has offered a blistering assessment of contemporary Australian politics, warning in his farewell speech that “race politics is back” and expressing his disbelief that “the biggest threats to racial harmony” come from “within our parliaments and from sections of our media”.

In the speech to be delivered today as Soutphommasane steps down after five years in the job, he singles out “dog-whistling” politicians and “race-baiting” commentators. He accuses prominent politicians of “enthusiastically seeking debates about immigration, multiculturalism and crime”, referring to Peter Dutton’s call for “special treatment” for white South African farmers, and Malcolm Turnbull’s claim that citizens of Melbourne have “real concern about Sudanese gangs”.

More than 30 people have been confirmed dead after another earthquake struck the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lombok on Sunday. Agung Pramuja, the head of the Disaster Mitigation Agency that covers Lombok, said at least 32 had been killed, many from northern and western parts of the island. The toll was expected to rise, with unconfirmed reports putting it as high as 80. Sunday’s quake struck at a depth of 10km, a week after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake killed 14 people on Lombok. Travellers at the international airports on both islands were thrown into panic and there was minor damage to the buildings but operations were not disrupted, officials said. Peter Dutton, on Lombok for a security summit, said everyone from Australia’s delegation was safe.



Hamza bin Laden appears increasingly intent upon inheriting his father’s mantle, with confirmation that the son of the late al-Qaida leader has married the daughter of the lead hijacker in the 9/11 terror attacks. Presenting himself as the heir to Osama bin Laden, Hamza has urged followers to wage war on Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv and is seen as a deputy to the terrorist group’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. His whereabout are unknown, but remaining family in Saudi Arabia have urged the son not to “retake the steps of your father”.

More than seven in 10 Australians want the government to set a high renewable energy target, a poll has found, with a desire to put downward pressure on power prices the motivating factor. On Friday the federal environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, will meet state and territory ministers to discuss the national energy guarantee, which imposes reliability and emissions reduction obligations on power retailers from 2020. Environmentalists and business groups have called for higher targets, urging leaders to “put aside politics and ideology” to avoid “yet another cycle of political sparring, indecision and inaction”.

Venezuela’s opposition coalition has raised concerns that President Nicolás Maduro could launch a political crackdown after an alleged drone attack on Saturday that has been claimed as an assassination attempt by the government. The Broad Front issued a statement calling such claims “irresponsible” and warned that the government was taking advantage of the alleged attack “to criminalise those who legitimately and democratically oppose it and deepen the repression and systematic human rights violations”.

Sport

The administration of Australian football codes is under the spotlight once more, as the AFL faces condemnation over the move to cut the women’s season to just six rounds, writes Craig Little, while the NRL continues to grapple with the fallout from the referee Matt Cecchin’s shock resignation after death threats, writes Matt Cleary.



Manchester City have had their first taste of silverware for the season, as Pep Guardiola’s men swept aside Chelsea 2-0 in the Community Shield, the curtain-raiser to the English season, thanks to two goals from Sergio Aguero.

Thinking time

When New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, returns to parliament today, her partner, Clarke Gayford, will remain at home with their daughter, Neve. Across New Zealand, only 4% of fathers take up the legally sanctioned two weeks’ unpaid leave; in Australia it’s less than 5%, in the UK 2%. In our new series Men at work: the power of paternity leave, Guardian Australia meets seven fathers on paternity leave or caring full-time for children, beginning with Rory McLeod, who lives on the Gold Coast with his two children. “This is not about patting men on the back, but rather encouraging a culture change so that other men feel comfortable taking time off work to care for their children.”

Citizen science is booming in Australia and around the world. Amateur stargazers create crowdsourced star maps; gamers with spare CPU capacity link up in mass computing events that model the way protein strands work; and CSIRO is calling on householders to track their energy use. But as Naaman Zhou writes, it’s in environmental science that most projects are being undertaken. “For the environmental issues we see today, that traditional ivory tower approach isn’t enough any more. Citizen science is trying to ... break down those barriers that have existed between scientists and the broader public.”

From Speedos to Mambo T-shirts, Australian men’s fashion says a lot about how we see ourselves, writes Nathan Dunne. Roger Leong, the curator of the exhibition Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715–2015 at the Powerhouse Museum, says men have always dressed as extravagantly as women. “Sadly, since the 19th century, in what the psychoanalyst John Flügel called the great male renunciation, men have had a lot of beauty beaten out of them.” Enter the humble budgie smugglers and Mambo T-shirts – a kind of “anti-beauty” and celebration of “the Australian ugliness”.

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump denies that he’s worried his son Donald Jr will be caught up in the Russia collusion investigation, tweeting on Sunday his condemnation of more CNN “Fake News reporting”. Meanwhile, Melania Trump’s statement praising the basketballer LeBron James is being hailed as a rebuke to her husband after he heavily criticised the NBA star on Friday.

Media roundup

Monash children’s hospital is the site of a world-first treatment that’s helping to save premature babies, the Herald Sun reports. Six infants weighing less than 800g, born between 24 and 28 weeks with damaged lungs, have been aided through the use of placenta cells. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald detail fresh privacy concerns about My Health Record, documenting the participation of the private genome-mapping firm Genome.One in the construction of the database. And the Financial Review writes that the blame game between Labor states and the federal Coalition is already beginning, should Friday’s national energy guarantee summit talks collapse.

Coming up

The banking royal commission resumes, with hearings this week examining superannuation funds.

It’s the final day of the Garma festival in north-east Arnhem Land.



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