Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 20 August.

Top stories

A week of crippling internal fighting on energy policy has triggered a nosedive in the polls for the Coalition, encouraging further speculation that a leadership challenge by Peter Dutton is imminent. The Coalition’s primary vote dropped dramatically in the latest Ipsos poll, released on Sunday night, leaving Labor with a 55%-45% two-party-preferred lead that would return it to government in a landslide if repeated at the federal election.

Close Malcolm Turnbull ally Christopher Pyne remained upbeat on Sunday, maintaining the government had “the right policy mix and if we are united we will win the next election”, but the minister for defence industry did concede: “There are some people who don’t support the current leader and that is quite obvious.”

Donald Trump has invoked the memories of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy in a frenzied attack on the New York Times, after a report detailed White House counsel Don McGahn’s extensive cooperation with the Mueller investigation into possible Russian election interference. Trump claimed he “allowed” the meeting, but the Times suggested it was motivated by fear on McGahn’s part of becoming a scapegoat for the president. Meanwhile Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has broken new rhetorical ground in defending the president’s failure to agree to be interviewed by Mueller, declaring on NBC that “truth isn’t truth”.

More than two million people have left Venezuela since 2015 in one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history, the United Nations has reported, with many now facing persecution and discrimination in neighbouring countries. Almost 50,000 people left in the last fortnight alone. President Nicolás Maduro has called the emigrants “slaves and beggars” for leaving the country in search of “the honeys” of affluence. Several countries are now closing their borders to fleeing Venezuelans.

Water levels are falling and rains have been predicted to ease in India’s monsoon-ravaged province of Kerala, where flooding has killed more than 370 people. At least 83,000km of roads will need repairing, the state’s chief minister has said, and about 20,000 homes and 40,000 hectares of crops are believed to have been destroyed. The armed forces reported that 23,213 people had been rescued in recent days.

The remains of 60 Aboriginal people have been reinterred after the 2017 floods that destroyed the Fitzroy Crossing cemetery in Western Australia. Working in 40C heat, volunteers coordinated by the Fitzroy Men’s Shed spent three months exhuming exposed bodies. Elders said the project was an important step for reconciliation and truth-telling about the impact of colonisation in the Kimberley.

Sport

Manchester United have conceded three goals in a first half for the first time since 2015, as the 12-time Premier League winners slumped to a remarkable 3-2 defeat at Mat Ryan’s Brighton. It was a less enjoyable day for fellow Socceroo Aaron Mooy, as Huddersfield capitulated 6-1 to a Sergio Agüero-led Manchester City.

Australian rugby is in crisis. That’s the takeaway from the disastrous 38-13 defeat to the All Blacks, which left the Wallabies on the brink of their 16th consecutive Bledisloe Cup loss, writes Bret Harris. “The most alarming aspect of the Wallabies’ performance against the All Blacks was not the disintegration of their set-pieces ... but the absence of vision and ambition in their game-plan.”

Thinking time

The community of Xolobeni on South Africa’s stunning Wild Coast has fought a titanium dune mine proposed by an Australian company for nearly 20 years. Photojournalist Thom Pierce captured their largely self-sufficient lifestyle, mostly built around fishing, but residents fear the granting of a mining licence would change their way of life irrevocably.

The classic Deborra-Lee Furness movie Shame, now restored and streaming on SBS On Demand, is a rare exception to the prurience and titillation of the rape-revenge sub-genre, writes Jenny Valentish. “Shame completely rejects the male gaze and doesn’t even depict the gang rape at the centre of the plot,” writes Valentish. But, “What’s depressing about Shame, 30 years on, is that its portrayal of the darker side of Australian masculinity is as relevant as ever.”

“It’s literally my job to eat as widely as possible so I can write about the food world,” says food and travel writer Melissa Leong. “From street food stands to the world’s fanciest food temples, there’s nothing I won’t eat and, in the words of the late, great Anthony Bourdain, ‘I’m hungry for more.’” But how to reconcile the demands of the job with the needs of one’s own body, in an industry anchored in hedonism?

Media roundup



The Australian, the Financial Review, the Daily Telegraph and Fairfax mastheads all lead with the leadership crisis engulfing Malcolm Turnbull, amid furious last-minute negotiations around energy policy and talk of a possible challenge from Peter Dutton. South Australian paramedics are at breaking point, the Adelaide Advertiser reports, with a Senate submission detailing 73 recorded incidents of high stress, fatigue or threats of violence on the job during the first half of 2018. And the Mercury leads with the remarkable rise from financial basketcase of basketball’s Hobart Chargers.

Coming up

Australia’s first Muslim woman senator, Mehreen Faruqi, will be sworn in as federal parliament resumes in a frenzy of leadership speculation.



Australian film-maker James Ricketson is due to reappear in a Cambodian court to face accusations of spying.

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