Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 27 June.

Top stories

Angus Taylor says a meeting attended by an investigator from the unit examining alleged illegal land-clearing by a company Taylor part owns had nothing to do with the case. The meeting was held between Taylor, Josh Frydenberg’s office and senior environment department officials. Guardian Australia revealed last week that Taylor met with Frydenberg’s office and department officials to discuss the federal government’s designation of critically endangered grasslands. The meetings occurred at the same time that New South Wales and federal investigations were underway into the poisoning of 30 hectares that contained the grasses on a property in the state’s Monaro region owned by Jam Land Pty Ltd.

The former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce expanded a taxpayer-funded farm finance scheme against the advice of Treasury, an audit has found. The scheme gives lucrative concessions to farmers. A report from the National Audit Office on the farm management deposit scheme shows that an expansion of the scheme, spearheaded by Joyce as minister in 2016, occurred despite none of the proposals having a “strong case for change”. The auditor general, Grant Hehir, has also found that the FMD scheme, which held more than $6.6bn in deposits in June 2018, does not have “fully effective” administration processes, risk identification or compliance measures in place. This is despite the amount of foregone revenue from the taxpayer-funded scheme more than doubling from $245m in 2016–17 to $500m in 2017–18.

Australian voters say it is more important to maintain funding for services such as health and education than giving workers on high incomes a tax cut, according to the latest Guardian Essential survey. The poll of 1,097 respondents suggests voters are not convinced of the merits of stage three of the Morrison government’s income tax package if information is presented to them in terms of budgetary trade-offs. A strong majority, 78%, said maintaining government investments in health and education was more important than legislating a tax cut for workers on incomes of $200,000. Three-quarters of the sample said people earning more than $150,000 should pay a higher rate of tax than workers earning $40,000.

World

Jared Kushner and Tony Blair at the Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Jared Kushner’s “deal of the century” has failed to materialise in Bahrain, where Trump’s senior advisor and son in law found no interest in his proposals for ending the Israel/Palestine conflict. The plan’s central premise of prosperity as a precursor to a lasting solution barely appeared to register on either side of the separation wall, writes Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov.

As the European heatwave continues, German officials imposed a 120km/h speed limit on stretches of the autobahn as the road surface began to deteriorate. A temperature of 38.6C was recorded on Wednesday in Coschen, near the Polish border, exceeding the country’s previous June high, while rail tracks buckled near Rostock on the Baltic Sea.

Sri Lanka’s president has ordered the execution of four drug offenders, potentially ending a 43-year moratorium on capital punishment. Maithripala Sirisena, the president, said on Wednesday he had signed the death warrants.

A Gambian pageant winner has accused the country’s former president of rape as an investigation claims Yahya Jammeh systematically sexually abused young women. Jammeh, who reluctantly stepped down in 2017 after 22 years of rule, presented himself as a deeply religious figure and an advocate of girls’ rights.

Evidence is mounting that Parkinson’s disease may start off in the gut. New research shows proteins thought to play a key role in the disease can spread from the gastrointestinal tract to the brain.

More than 9 million people around the world play Candy Crush for between three and six hours – or more – a day, a top executive at the maker of the multibillion dollar game has revealed.

Opinion and analysis

As the archbishop of Sydney decries the Israel Folau’s sacking for his words, his church insists on sacking teachers for their sexuality. Photograph: Geoff Caddick/AFP/Getty Images

With Israel Folau, the church is demanding a kind of free speech that keeps gays in the firing line, writes David Marr. “These Christians – by no means all Christians – are willing to burn up huge amounts of political capital to keep and, if possible extend, their power to punish homosexuals. It’s a weird pivot of their faith. This is not all they want the Morrison government to shore up with legislation, but it’s at the core of their demands. They are shy of saying it in so many words, of course, hence all the malarkey we’ve been hearing from them for the last couple of years about freedom. Here’s a simple principle: being decent and kind requires no legislation. You only need a religious freedom act to shelter behind when you plan to be nasty – say to age-old targets of your wrath like gays.”

“The latest engineering construction figures show yet more evidence that Australia’s economy has been struggling for nearly a year now, and that the public sector is failing to fill the gap of falling private sector infrastructure work,” Greg Jericho writes. “What a difference a year makes. This time last year I wrote of the latest engineering construction figures that ‘infrastructure spending remains well below peak levels’ but ‘fortunately the level of public infrastructure spending has been rising very strongly’. And now, with the latest release of the engineering construction figures by the Bureau of Statistics, we see that the volume of infrastructure work done for both the private and public sectors has declined for four straight quarters and is now at its lowest level since 2016.”

Sport

Donald Trump has warned Megan Rapinoe not to “disrespect” her country. Rapinoe, who has won the World Cup and Olympics, is outspoken on social issues and was the first white professional athlete to kneel for the national anthem in protest of social injustice in the United States, before US Soccer passed a rule requiring team members to stand for the anthem.

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika has flagged his side will adopt a new style of attack following the departure of former attack coach Stephen Larkham, who claimed the pair had fundamental differences in their philosophies. The Wallabies’ plan of attack at the World Cup later this year might be a case of “everything old is new again” as Cheika goes back to his roots in an attempt to revitalise the team, which last year endured their worst season since 1958.

Thinking time: ‘I’d put on a smiling face, then go home and fall apart’

US singer-songwriter Carrie Underwood. Photograph: Jason Moore/Zuma Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Saturday night on the banks of the Ohio River, and the most American of scenes is unfolding. At the Ball Park, the Cincinnati Reds are playing the Texas Rangers, while at the US Bank Arena next door Carrie Underwood is making the latest stop on her global tour. Fans spill together through the muggy streets, a mingling of scarlet baseball jerseys and tan cowboy boots.

This is Underwood’s first tour since 2016, a huge two-hour, 60-date monolith of a show in support of last year’s album Cry Pretty. It must be a strange time for such a quintessentially American artist to be visiting the wider world, especially one who is white, southern and religious. “I feel like more people try to pin me places politically,” she says carefully. “I try to stay far out of politics if possible, at least in public, because nobody wins. It’s crazy. Everybody tries to sum everything up and put a bow on it, like it’s black and white. And it’s not like that.”

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that NSW Labor leadership hopeful Chris Minns “accepted a banned donation from a Labor party fixer and property developer Bechara Khouri in the lead-up to his election to parliament.” The Age’s front page story this morning is Australia leads bid to sideline America. The headline Final act: Call the G-G appears above a photograph of a downcast Malcolm Turnbull on the Australian’s front page, as the paper reveals that: “The day before Malcolm Turnbull was deposed, the prime minister clashed with attorney general Christian Porter over a last-ditch plan to save his leadership by persuading­ governor general Peter Cosgrove not to commission Peter Dutton as prime minister.”

Coming up

US Democrats are preparing for their first showdown as the 2020 debates loom. 20 presidential hopefuls will go head-to-head in Miami on 26 and 27 June. Here’s what you need to know.

The 61st TV Week Logie awards ceremony will be held on the Gold Coast.

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