Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 8 February.

Top stories

A water-sharing plan for the Barwon-Darling was altered by the former NSW minister for primary industries Katrina Hodgkinson to make it more favourable to irrigators and deliver valuable additional water during low flows. According to some modelling the changes may have increased legal extractions by irrigators by 32%. Documents obtained by the Guardian, including ministerial briefing notes and minutes, show that NSW bureaucrats and an independent panel charged with assessing the public submissions thought they had come up with a balanced plan, which they put to the minister for signature in about June 2012. But even though the public process had closed, an irrigator lobbyist, Ian Cole, who was chair of the body representing large irrigators, Barwon-Darling Water, ramped up his representations directly to her. By October, when she signed off the plan, a number of his suggested changes had been accepted.

Terry Korn, president of the Australian Floodplain Association, whose members include farmers downriver from Bourke, said the water-sharing plan disadvantaged people down the river. The plan is being investigated by the Independent Commission against Corruption, which is also looking into the NSW government’s handling of allegations of water theft.



The fallout from the revelation about Barnaby Joyce’s affair looks set to continue today after the deputy PM said last night that he was “incredibly hurt” that private issues had been “dragged into the public arena”. Joyce appeared on ABC’s 7.30 program but refused to answer any questions about his relationship with former staff member Vikki Campion, who is pregnant with his child. He did say that the breakdown of his marriage to his wife, Natalie, with whom he has four children, was one of his “greatest failures”.

Scott Morrison does not believe politicians should tell companies how much to pay their workers. He says mandating wage rises as part of a corporate tax cut or any other package is “contrary to every economic instinct of the Coalition”. In a lengthy interview with the treasurer, Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, delves into the thinking behind his economic decisions and plans. Morrison says the government is focused on middle-income earners who feel squeezed by price increases after a long period of wages being flat, and will aim to deliver income tax relief as soon as it is fiscally responsible to do so. But he says there is no need for the government to adopt more interventionist policies to boost wages growth, despite the imperative of lifting consumption to support the economy.



Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has agreed on the terms of a coalition deal with the centre-left Social Democrats after marathon talks in Berlin. The breakthrough promises to end a prolonged period of political uncertainty in Germany and pave the way towards a renewed “grand coalition”, a constellation that would make the rightwing populist party Alternative für Deutschland the leaders of the opposition. At the elections in September, the SPD plunged to its worst result since the second world war, and the performance of Merkel’s CDU also disappointed supporters.

Quentin Tarantino is facing a growing backlash from Hollywood, which is threatening to derail his illustrious career. The film-maker was accused of negligence by Uma Thurman, fetishisation by Rose McGowan and audio has surfaced of him defending convicted the child sex-offender Roman Polanski. The actor Busy Philipps tweeted her regret at wanting to work with him. “I’m embarrassed that I ever auditioned for him … This business sucks and enables predators.” Tarantino’s name trended on Twitter, with many echoing Philipps’ declaration that the director was “cancelled”. Melissa Silverstein, founder and publisher of Women in Hollywood, told the Guardian: “This feels epic. I think people are really disgusted.”

Sport

Australia won their opening Trans-Tasman T20 series match against England by five wickets after Glenn Maxwell struck his second international Twenty20 hundred, from 58 balls. Australia made light work of a target of 156 after England had lost seven wickets for 43 in 47 balls. Like an old sports car, England are never more susceptible to falling apart than when moving at their fastest.

With only 12 Premier League games left to play, our writers discuss which three teams will join Manchester City in next season’s Champions League and which two will miss out.

Thinking time

Elon Musk is right: silly and fun things are important. But some of them are an indefensible waste of resources, writes Nathan Robinson, who watched the tech billionaire’s launch of SpaceX launch with an increasingly heavy heart. “There is, perhaps, no better way to appreciate the tragedy of 21st-century global inequality than by watching a billionaire spend $90m launching a $100,000 car into the far reaches of the solar system,” Robinson writes. “Anyone who mentions the colossal waste the project involves, or the various social uses to which these resources could be put, can be dismissed as a killjoy.”



Is Australia’s financial sector bloated and uncompetitive? Guardian Australia’s economics writer Greg Jericho certainly thinks so. “The draft report by the Productivity Commission into competition in the financial sector is a withering attack on the banking sector,” he writes, “where a focus on stability has overridden a desire for competition.” The Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and NAB control just over 80% of all owner-occupier home loans and 85% of all investor housing loans. “This high market share was not always the case,” he writes. And does it still need to be?

What’s he done now?

The stock market is making a “big mistake”, Donald Trump said overnight, days after a record-breaking sell-off on the US exchanges. “In the ‘old days,’ when good news was reported, the Stock Market would go up. Today, when good news is reported, the Stock Market goes down. Big mistake, and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to data on higher wages that triggered this week’s huge falls.

Media roundup

Most Australian newspapers splash with Barnaby Joyce’s admission of an extra-marital affair with an office staffer, bringing an end to his marriage. “I failed,” shout the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph. “The secret that inevitably gave birth to turmoil” at the Australian, and “Deceit and hurt behind Barnaby’s Baby Joyce” at the West Australian. The Sydney Morning Herald reveals more than 20 staff at the University of Sydney are under investigation for financial misconduct, while the ABC science team have an interesting read on the much maligned magpie, reporting that the bird’s brain power may be improved by living in larger groups.

Coming up

Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten and Richard Di Natale will attend a breakfast this morning with the social justice commissioner, June Oscar, and a co-chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, Rod Little, to mark 10 years of the Close the Gap campaign.

The Australian chef de mission for the Winter Olympics, Ian Chesterman, will announce the PyeongChang Games flag bearer after the team welcome ceremony.

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