Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 18 July.

Top stories

“Strongmen politics are in the ascendant.” Barack Obama has delivered a stinging rebuke to his successor as US president, condemning politicians who trade in the politics of fear and deny objective reality. In what has been described as his most important speech since leaving office, and without once mentioning Donald Trump by name, Obama said “people just make stuff up” in politics, and the denial of facts and the rise of the strongman could be the undoing of democracy. Obama insisted: “For democracy to work, we have to believe in an objective reality, you have to believe in facts. Without facts there is no basis for cooperation. If I say this is a podium and you say this is an elephant, it is going to be hard for us to cooperate.”

Meanwhile, the fallout of Trump’s “treasonous” backing of Russian president Vladmir Putin continues, with top Republicans scrambling to distance themselves from his behaviour, and some outright condemning it. The president further muddied the waters by telling reporters on Tuesday that he accepted his intelligence services’ findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election – and then backtracking again. “Let me be totally clear in saying that … I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” Trump said. Then he added: “It could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”

Labor and migration experts have questioned the integrity of the Coalition’s “crackdown” on permanent migration, suggesting ballooning numbers of bridging visas indicates longer waits rather than more rejections may be driving the numbers. On Friday the Australian newspaper published home affairs department figures – still not publicly available – that reveal just 163,000 people permanently migrated to Australia in 2017-18, down from 183,608 the year before. Peter Dutton has claimed reduced numbers of migrants are the result of additional scrutiny, but demographer Liz Allen, from the Australian National University, said the partial statistics “don’t paint a picture of a genuine crackdown”. “I’m concerned that the latest migration statistics suggest more of an accounting quirk, or magic trick, to give the illusion the government is reducing migrant intake when there’s actually little to no real change in net overseas migration,” Allen said.

State and territory governments should not sign on to the Turnbull government’s national energy guarantee until such time as it contains meaningful emissions reductions, according to the former head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Oliver Yates, a respected industry player now active in the renewables sector and a board member of the Smart Energy Council – a solar group critical of the Neg – said the Turnbull government’s policy “doesn’t do anything other than create a stable emissions profile for existing coal-fired power stations”. “It’s absolutely of no benefit to the national transition away from emissions,” Yates said. “The only thing it does is help people producing emissions to know they don’t have to reduce their emissions over the next 10 years.” He said companies active in renewable energy in Australia would be “better off with nothing” than the current emissions reduction target.

Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter – one on a collision course with the others. One of the new moons, described as an “oddball”, is circling Jupiter on a suicide orbit that will inevitably lead to its violent destruction with another moon, which would create a crash so large it would be visible from Earth, astronomers say. Researchers in the US stumbled upon the new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet that is postulated to lurk far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system. Astronomers are currently working on predicative modelling for how long the little moon has left.

Environmental groups and health advocates have denounced Coles’s new Little Shop promotion as “commercial exploitation of kids”, “nonsensical” and “environmentally damaging”. From Wednesday, Coles shoppers will be offered a free toy – a miniature version of 30 well-known household products – with every $30 spent. The range includes mini Tim Tams, Vegemite, Nutella, Leggo’s pasta sauce jars and Oak chocolate milk cartons. The minis are made from various materials including paper, cardboard, plastic and foam. The executive director of the Boomerang Alliance, Jeff Angel, said: “The vast majority of these so-called collectables will be thrown away, finding their way into the litter stream and certainly landfill. It’s another example of mad marketing that doesn’t care about wasting resources and polluting the environment.”

Sport

Tim Cahill’s 107 caps is a record for an outfield player, and his 50 goals almost double the tally of the nearest Socceroo. But his career is defined not by numbers but by moments, with Cahill the definition of a big game player, and surely retiring the “greatest”.



It has been one regular season now after the culling of Western Force. Despite some improvements for the remaining Australian teams, only one reached the play-offs, the same number as last year. Moving forward, it needs to be asked if Rugby Australia has learned anything from the Force’s demise.



Thinking time

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? follows a long line of TV troublemakers who fooled guests into self-sabotage, but his scattergun approach risks missing the mark – is the age of ambush TV over? “With Candid Camera having launched way back in 1948, the ambush prank show has deep roots. But variations on the format went into overdrive in the 1990s, a decade that, surely not coincidentally, saw celebrity culture spiral out of control.”

Recent reports were scathing in their assessment of the treatment of two of the most vulnerable groups in NSW, children in out-of-home care and homeless youth. Three community service peak bodies are concerned that it took two years of sustained pressure for the NSW government to release one of the reports. “Without any information about this most vulnerable group of children, our agencies are in the dark as to how we can help ... these kids are truly lost to the system, and we fear that’s just the beginning of a life of falling between the cracks.”



For every extraordinary feat undertaken by Telsa founder Elon Musk, there’s something else bizarre or shameful – most recently calling a Thailand cave rescuer a “pedo”, writes Hannah Jane Parkinson. How can a man who does such good in the world also be such a bonehead? “Last week I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in those boys’ situation, trapped in a wet, dark cave. But I think being trapped in a wet, dark cave and finding an unworkable Elon Musk vanity project was my only hope of getting out would just about top it.”

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has repeatedly said his father was born in Germany, using the connection in an attempt to smooth increasingly fractious relations with the EU. Turns out Fred Trump was born in New York City, in the United States of America. Not Germany.

Media roundup

The Courier Mail reports the Adani coalmine is close to clearing an important hurdle, quoting Karan Adani, chief executive of the ports business, saying that the company is now closing the financing of the rail line.

Surfers would be banned from the northern end of what is arguably Australia’s most famous beach, Bondi, under a plan being considered by the local council, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Australian reports less than a third of Australians are satisfied with Donald Trump’s performance as US president, with a special Newspoll showing his support is strongest among One Nation voters.

Coming up

The inquest into the death in custody of Indigenous man David Dungay will resume in Sydney.

Labor senator Penny Wong will deliver as speech to the United States Studies Centre about the future of US influence in Asia.

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