Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 27 August.

Top stories

Voter support for the Coalition has plummeted to its lowest level in a decade, with a fresh Newspoll registering strong dissatisfaction after last week’s leadership chaos. Primary support for the Coalition has dipped to 33%, with the two-party-preferred voted shifting 56% to 44% to Labor.

The opposition has wasted no time beginning its run for the next election, releasing an attack ad focusing on the prime minister, Scott Morrison. With the claim that Morrison is “out of touch” with middle Australia, the 30-second Facebook clip focuses on the new leader’s voting record. Morrison named his “new generation” cabinet on Sunday, with Julie Bishop vacating foreign affairs for Marise Payne, and Peter Dutton retaining home affairs but handing immigration to David Coleman.

Police have reported “multiple fatalities” after a shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, with a suspect dead at the scene. A local reporter told CNN at least four people were dead as police continued to search for survivors believed to have hidden themselves in locked areas. It was believed between 40 and 50 people were at the venue, an online gaming tournament.

A search will continue today for dozens of people believed to be in hiding in Queensland’s crocodile-infested Daintree rainforest after their boat – believed to be a fishing vessel – foundered near the mouth of the Daintree River. Eleven men, all understood to be Vietnamese, were detained on Sunday but up to 30 others are still being sought. Some were believed to be hiding in mangroves, which are infested with deadly saltwater crocodiles.

Pope Francis has pleaded for forgiveness to a crowd of several hundred thousand in Dublin, with the issue of sexual and institutional abuse dominating his 36-hour visit to Ireland. The pope’s requests for forgiveness were met with applause but abuse survivors said he had told them he had no new measures planned to hold to account bishops who covered up abuse. And a retired Vatican diplomat has called for the Pope’s resignation, accusing him of a “conspiracy of silence” and of covering for the disgraced Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

North Korea has accused the US of “double dealing”, after Donald Trump cancelled the secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang. On Friday the president suggested nuclear talks could be on hold until US-China trade relations were “resolved”. The state-controlled paper Rodong Sinmun was fierce in its condemnation: “Such acts prove that the US is hatching a criminal plot to unleash a war against the DPRK and commit a crime which deserves merciless divine punishment”, all the while “having a dialogue with a smile on its face”.

Sport

After Australia’s 16th consecutive loss of the Bledisloe Cup, questions are being asked about Michael Cheika’s coaching future. The yawning chasm between the Wallabies and All Blacks shows it’s time for Australian rugby to harness the power of fast transition play, writes Bret Harris.

After a round six defeat in 2010 there was speculation that Hawthorn’s president, Jeff Kennett, was about to sack Alastair Clarkson. Fans will be glad he didn’t, as the club have made continued success an artform. “While the fortunes of most football teams are cyclical,” writes Craig Little, “the evidence indicates that last year may simply have been a caesura in another successful Hawthorn era.”

Thinking time

Neil Simon, a titan of four decades on Broadway, has died aged 91, and the man who was born on 4 July became an intrinsically American icon, writes Mark Lawson. Simon drew on his own life for his most famous work, including Barefoot in the Park (1963) and Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982), while The Odd Couple (1965) was one of several comedies in which living together exposed tensions between an optimist and a pessimist. “Respect for Simon’s script-craft was such that, in Hollywood, where screenplays are notoriously prone to pass through multiple hands, he achieved 20 solo writing credits. Simon’s rare ability to depict the behaviour of relatives, friends and lovers in a pressured situation will endure.”

Ahoora, a refugee originally from Iran, has been held on Nauru for five of the seven years of his life. Medical professionals fear for the mental health of the boy, who has witnessed near-daily suicide attempts on the island. Ahoora does not attend school owing to fear of bullying, but given pens, he draws. They are not the conventional drawings of a young child: he draws pictures of children on fire, of sharks circling small terrified boys, of crying faces behind bars. “In my nightmares, darkness surrounds me,” he says. “In my dreams, I keep on dying.”

Amid the tributes for John McCain, contrasts were drawn between the statesmanship of the one-time Republican presidential candidate and Donald Trump. But in some ways, the track towards Trump was unintentionally paved by McCain thanks to his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. “It was an act of political desperation that left Washington aghast,” writes David Smith. “It delivered a short-term boost in the polls. But it also opened the Pandora’s box of populism.”

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump’s tweet of condolences to the family of John McCain has not avoided a sense of rift, with the White House failing to issue a statement after the 81-year-old’s death, despite tributes from around the world, including from George W Bush and Barack Obama. While Trump went off to play golf, he also found time to tweet about consumer spending and the latest stock market figures.

Media roundup

Most of Australia’s mastheads lead with the latest developments in Canberra, with the Australian citing its Newspoll as evidence that voters have savaged “Coalition chaos”. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Kevin Rudd has launched a vitriolic attack on Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch for unleashing an “orgy of political violence”, claiming that Australian politics has become toxic and unstable owing to an obsession with opinion polls and a juvenile culture. And the Courier-Mail gives prominence to the search for at least 20 people, possibly asylum seekers, whose boat is believed to have run aground in crocodile-infested waters north of Cairns.

Coming up

Tony Abbott is giving a speech at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney today about immigration and the challenges of a “Big Australia”.

A verdict is expected in the spying case of the Australian film-maker James Ricketson in Cambodia.

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