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

Top stories

Malcolm Turnbull is going to go down in history as the man who introduced Australia’s first parliamentary sex ban after declaring ministers will no longer be able to have “sexual relations” with their staff. In an extraordinary statement (which you can read in full) at the very end of turbulent sitting week dominated by debate over Barnaby Joyce’s relationship with a staffer and subsequent marriage breakdown, Turnbull let loose. He said his deputy PM had made “a shocking error of judgement” and created a “world of woe” for the women in his life. He said Joyce was taking some personal leave to reflect and seek forgiveness from his former wife and four daughters, “and make a new home for his partner and their baby”. The prime minister’s late-afternoon declaration followed confirmation that Joyce would not act in the top job, as is customary, when Turnbull departs Australia to visit Washington next week.

Political editor Katharine Murphy analyses what seems like a very permanent rupture in the relationship between the prime minister and his deputy, and the possible repercussions of the sex ban itself. “Moral judgments of political figures become sanctioned activity … because character is now a legitimate question. Why? Because the prime minister said so. The prime minister has sanctioned federal parliament’s sex round.”

The suspect in the Florida school shooting, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, as it was revealed the troubled teen had a history of disturbing online behaviour, mental health problems and a documented obsession with guns and violence. Local Florida officials have lined up to express their determination to stem the bloodletting in America’s schools and other public places. “The violence has to stop. We cannot lose another child in this country to violence in a school,” said Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, promising to meet state lawmakers to search for solutions on mental illness and gun control.

South Korea’s presidential hopeful Ahn Hee-jung has a message for Australia, which sells more than $6bn worth of coal to his country every year: the world is changing and coal will soon be history. Before interviewing Ahn, the Guardian was told by an officer at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that there was some concern that the topic of the interview was coal. Unease in Australian government circles about Ahn’s attitude to coal is not surprising. For a governor of a province – South Chungcheong – that hosts the majority of South Korea’s coal power, with 29 massive coal power stations including the biggest in the world, Ahn is not the man you would expect to be spearheading a “coal phase-out alliance” and declaring his province “post-coal”. But that’s exactly what he’s done.

Cyril Ramaphosa has taken over as president of South Africa, immediately vowing to fight corruption in a direct reference to accusations levelled against his predecessor, Jacob Zuma. The former anti-apartheid activist was elected unopposed. “Issues to do with corruption, issues of how we can straighten out our state-owned enterprises and how we deal with ‘state capture’ are issues that are on our radar screen,” Ramaphosa said, in a reference to improper influence over government institutions, ministers and state-owned businesses by Zuma’s associates.

Labor has declared it wants to “take politics out of the classroom” and proposes a $73m-a-year institute to advise schools on which educational programs are most effective. Under Labor’s plan, the Evidence Institute for Schools would commission research, assess programs promoted and sold into schools, and provide educators with guides summarising the evidence of best teaching practice. The party’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, says it would improve education standards by spreading the best teaching practices and educational programs, and also save schools money by helping them avoid products that don’t live up to claims to boost educational outcomes. Learning methods are frequently the subject of political controversy, and Plibersek says an evidence-based approach should be adopted.

Sport

Australia has won its second silver medal of the 2018 Winter Olympics, after Jarryd Hughes came in just behind France’s Pierre Vaultier in a dramatic snowboard cross final at Pyeongchang’s Phoenix Snow Park.

Manchester City, one of the clubs most seriously implicated in the Barry Bennell sexual abuse scandal, have been accused of putting hundreds of boys in danger after it emerged they were warned by one of their own coaches in the late-1970s it was “general knowledge” he was a risk to children. Bennell has been convicted of a total of 50 offences against 12 boys

Thinking time

As Sydney gears up to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, photographer Richard Hedger shares original portraits of prominent members of the the city’s LGBTI+ community. From former justice of the high court Michael Kirby to former rugby league player Casey Conway to actor and broadcaster Faustina Agolley, their pictures and their memories of Mardi Gras appear in his new book, Telling Tales: 40 Fabulous Years of Floats, Fun, Fantasy and Fortitude.

Sarah Blasko’s sixth album feels in some ways like the product of trauma or a breakup. With Depth of Field, the Aria award-winning Australian songwriter has pulled together a flinty yet vulnerable collection of songs that feel possessed of a dark undercurrent – the sort of edge that comes around after you have spent one too many late-night hours waiting for your partner to return home from carousing. It’s an album as great as any Australian pop you’ve heard.

With huge numbers of shows being produced each year, competition is so fierce that bizarre starting points are seen as the best way to hook viewers. But with Daniel Radcliffe staring as an angel administrator: are TV premises are getting too weird? “Television, especially comedy, was once all about place,” writes Stuart Heritage. “You’d pick a wide-open location – a family home, a workplace, a bar – and use it as a canvas for all manner of plot and character devices ... but now it feels like there’s been a shift, and premise has started to replace place.”

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has made his first public address after the Florida school shooting, urging children to ask for help if they needed it, and saying more focus needs to be directed toward tackling mental health issues. But the President lacked a sense of urgency, and failed to say anything about gun control in America, a topic he has assiduously avoided during his term, instead focusing on the individual to blame “mental disturbances” for the spate of mass shootings in America.

Media roundup

The Mercury in Hobart splashes with some good news: the state’s unemployment rate is at the lowestlevel since 2011. Last month there were 246,200 Tasmanians in work; 152,300 of them in full-time work. Tasmania was the second-best performing state in the country. Most Australian newspapers have a field day with the PMs sex-ban. “The End of the Affair,” says the Sydney Morning Herald. “Totally Bonkers,” at the Courier-Mail, “No Pokies,” at the Advertiser, and “Turnbull’s First Commandment,” by the Age. Orangutan numbers have plunged by 100,000 in 16 years, the ABC reports, according to new research on the primates. Roughly half of orangutan’s in Borneo were killed or removed between 1999 and 2015, a higher amount than researchers had expected.

Coming up

The Senate inquiry into the abuse redress scheme will hear from survivors groups, counsellors, Anglicare, the Anglican church, the Salvation Army, the Uniting church, Scouts Australia, the Department of Social Services, Department of Human Services.

The Melbourne Storm take on the Leeds Rhinos from the UK in the Rugby League World Challenge tonight.

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