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

Top stories

Justin Milne “would intervene” with ABC executives about stories he disliked, multiple sources have told Guardian Australia. The ABC chairman regularly spoke to executives, including the corporation’s news director, Gaven Morris, about contentious stories or content he didn’t approve of, sources say. Milne is under growing pressure following reports on Wednesday morning that he told the former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie to “get rid of” chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici because the Coalition government “hate her”. Milne also reportedly referred to Guthrie as “the missus”. Speaking from New York, the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has reportedly denied he asked for Alberici to be sacked. “The bottom line is I have never called for anybody to be fired,” he said, according to media reports. Turnbull also defended his complaints to Milne and insisted any questions of whether Milne should resign were “a matter for him”.

A wide range of names are being tossed around as potential managing director candidates, including at least two members of Guthrie’s executive team and media executives from the private sector. But there are concerns the chaos within the national broadcaster could delay recruitment. Here are some of the names are being touted as Guthrie’s possible successor at the national broadcaster.

A third woman has accused US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Julie Swetnick says she witnessed efforts by Kavanaugh and others “to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys”. In a statement Swetnick said: “In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.” Judge, a friend of Kavanaugh’s, was also named by Christine Blasey Ford, the first of the three women who have now accused Kavanaugh of past sexual assault or misconduct. Ford says Judge was the third person in the room when Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. Judge and Kavanaugh deny the allegations. Kavanaugh is due at a public hearing on Capitol Hill later on Thursday to answer allegations from Ford.

A leaked document reveals EU’s intensified preparations for a no-deal Brexit amid heightened fears Jeremy Corbyn will order Labour MPs to vote down any deal. The UK opposition party’s stated goal to reject the prime minister, Theresa May’s, deal to spark a general election has provoked a rush of activity in Brussels, where Labour’s plans are regarded as one of the substantial risks to the negotiations. Shortly after Corbyn ended his leader’s speech at the Labour party conference, one of the European commission’s most senior officials addressed EU ambassadors on contingency planning in the event of a breakdown in talks, or a failure of the UK parliament to ratify an agreement struck in Brussels.

The Business Council of Australia faces a negative ad blitz over its criticism of the 45% emissions target. The Australia Institute will launch an advertising campaign today debunking the assertion that the 45% target would wreck economy. In public statements in support of the Coalition’s now dumped national energy guarantee, a policy that included an emissions reduction target of 26% by 2030, the BCA described that level of abatement as “workable”, but characterised Labor’s 45% alternative as “economy wrecking”. The Morrison government is also gearing up to campaign against the 45% target. The Australia Institute’s advertisements will appear online, on Sky News and breakfast commercial TV.

A “meme of the year” has been declared sexist by Swedish ad watchdog. The “distracted boyfriend meme” is a stock image of a man ogling another woman while with his girlfriend. The three characters have been used to comment on culture, romance and politics. Internet services provider Bahnhof used the meme in recruitment advertisements posted on Facebook, labelling the boyfriend “You”, the girlfriend “Your current workplace”, and the second woman “Bahnhof”. The ombudsman said the image objectified the two women by presenting them as workplaces, but the man as an individual, and added that the “other woman” was clearly a “sex object … unrelated to the advertisement, which is for recruiting salespeople, operating engineers and a web designer”.

Sport

He’d never even watched a game of NFL, now he’s set to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. Plucked from the development squad of the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Jordan Mailata took up American football after clips of him barging through rugby league opponents were circulated widely on YouTube, catching the attention of the NFL’s International Player Pathway program.

Collingwood, the “scum of Victoria”, has united to defy the critics, writes Jonathan Horn. The AFL club has endured a torrid past few seasons. After receiving widespread external criticism, it is backing coach Nathan Buckley and on Sunday, he may deliver them a premiership.

Thinking time

Lilly Allen’s new memoir and a documentary about MIA show how anti-woman narratives are cemented in real time, and reveal how endurance might yield small vindications, writes Laura Snapes. One grew up privileged, with the Groucho Club as her creche, while her father revelled downstairs. The other left civil war-stricken Sri Lanka for London age 10 while her father, a Tamil resistance leader, stayed to fight. What they have in common is the gaslighting, humiliation and industry-scale punishment they have faced for being outspoken women with large platforms – and outspoken women who have often turned out to be right.

Women earn less than men because they leave the workforce to raise children – it’s no use hiding the facts, writes Greg Jericho. “The latest compilation of gender indicators by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is a report card that reads: improvement made but there is still a long way to go. The indicators come as the Labor party has announced a policy for companies with more than 1,000 employees to publicly reveal how much they pay women compared with men – a policy, which the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has suggested might lead to ‘conflict in the workplace’.”

Meghan Markle closed her own car door during her first solo engagement, at the Royal Academy of Arts. Whether this startling event will happen again remains to be seen, but for now, here are many of the everyday things the royals – mostly Charles, really – cannot or will not do. The list includes ironing one’s own shoelaces, squeezing one’s own toothpaste and knowing what clingfilm is.

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has accused China of seeking to interfere in US congressional elections in November, using his chairmanship of the UN security council to spring a surprise on his fellow world leaders – and, it seems, his administration staff.

Media roundup

Leading Fairfax and News Corp mastheads are focused on the ABC crisis, with the Australian Financial Review reporting this morning that Malcolm Turnbull has “strongly denied ever demanding the ABC board sack journalists Emma Alberici and Andrew Probyn”, saying his primary complaint was with the broadcaster’s accuracy and impartiality, which he said has ‘deteriorated’ in recent years”. Meanwhile, the Mercury reports that Tasmania’s health system is underfunded by a $100m a year. According to a secret KPMG report obtained by the paper, “Tasmania has the lowest health funding as a proportion of GST receipts and significantly lower than any other state”. The NT News front page is all about the fourth season of Million Dollar Fish. The competition offers anglers not one but five chances to catch the $1m barramundis released in Top End waterways.

Coming up

Questions are expected to continue over whether the ABC chairman, Justin Milne, will remain in the position following yesterday’s revelations.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release its job vacancies figures for August at 11.30am.

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