Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 1 April.

Top stories

Labor will set a national electric vehicles target of 50% of new car sales by 2030, as part of its climate change policy to be unveiled on Monday. Bill Shorten will also flag a new pollution regulation on car retailers “in line with” 105g CO2/km for light vehicles, which is consistent with American emissions standards. As Guardian Australia revealed on Saturday, Labor will beef up the Morrison government’s heavily criticised emissions safeguard mechanism if it wins the coming election.

Bringing forward the Coalition’s income tax cuts would give high-income earners an extra $104 a week, while low- to middle-income earners would gain just 50 cents to $4 a week, according to new modelling from the Australian Council of Social Service. The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has done nothing to hose down expectations of tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners in Tuesday’s budget, which would come on top of $285m in one-off payments to pensioners and other welfare recipients, except those on Newstart. The Acoss analysis concluded that increasing Newstart would be the most effective way to support people on the lowest incomes.

The Trump administration has reiterated the president’s threat to close the border with Mexico, regardless of consequences for the US economy. White House acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on Sunday the president had few other options in the absence of support from Democrats for more border security or legislative action to change immigration law. “Faced with those limitations, the president will do everything he can,” Mulvaney said. “If closing the ports of entry means that, that’s exactly what he intends to do.”

World

Joe Biden is a likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2020. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The former US vice-president Joe Biden has promised to “listen respectfully” to any allegations that he behaved inappropriately towards women after a former member of the Nevada state assembly accused him of kissing her head without consent.

Leaked medical reports understood to have been prepared for King Salman reveal the severe abuse of political prisoners in Saudia Arabia, who are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns.

Zuzana Čaputová, a 45-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner, has been elected Slovakia’s first female president, after fighting a positive campaign based on progressive values and political reform.

Brexit is delaying key pieces of UK legislation, angering ministers and officials, amid reports of paralysis as the government wallows in crisis. Theresa May will have to consider accepting a softer Brexit if the measure is supported by parliament this week, the justice secretary, David Gauke, has said.

Exit polls in Ukraine have given the comic Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who plays the president in a television series called Servant of the People, a commanding lead in the first round of voting to become the actual president.

Opinion and analysis

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr Olympia contest, Pretoria, South Africa, 1975. Photograph: Courtesy Annie Leibovitz and Hauser & Wirth

“Annie Leibovitz is standing by a photograph she took of Pont Neuf in Paris. It’s a swirling panoramic shot of the famous bridge, taken when she was a student and would roam the city’s streets camera in hand. One day, with a thrill, she realised she was standing where her idol, Henri Cartier-Bresson, once stood to take his own ghostly grey picture of the Seine crossing. Leibovitz’s homage to the great French photographer did not stop there,” writes Jordan Riefe.

“There is no magic wand to rid us of Trump – or Brexit,” writes Nesrine Malik. “While the Mueller report has not been released in its entirety, it is now clear Trump will not be indicted, and will stand for a second term. There is to be no easy redemption, no saviour for the US.” Britain, too, has to address the real discontent revealed by the Brexit vote, rather than fixating on the lies and propaganda of the leave campaign. “None of this is simple to unwind. And so instead, a second referendum becomes our magic wand, the UK’s Mueller report. But there is no way out of this that does not reckon with the ugliness and division that the leave vote uncovered.”

Sport

Sunday’s AFLW grand final, won by Adelaide in front of more than 53,000 fans, will go down in the history books as one of the most important events in our nation’s sporting history, writes Kasey Symons.

A dramatic own goal minutes from time has given Liverpool a 2-1 win over Tottenham, and put the pressure back on Manchester City in the race for the Premiership title.

Thinking time: Sandy Hook’s tragic legacy

Jeremy Richman with his daughter Avielle, who was six when she was killed.

Twenty children died in the 2012 US school shooting. Now the father of one of the victims is also dead, tormented by conspiracy theorists and unbearable grief, writes Tim Adams. There is no easy explanation to find in Richman’s death, Adams says. But there are two contexts that are hard to ignore. “The first is that the previous week two of the teenage survivors of the Parkland school shooting in Florida had also taken their own lives. Richman, in his public statements over the years, had often noted how each time there was a new tragedy, a new mass shooting – and there were so very many – he and Jennifer ‘would just sit and bawl’.

“The other, related, context in which Richman’s death asks to be viewed is the unspeakable way in which the burden of grief that the Newtown parents have borne was added to by those who sought to exploit the tragedy. In the eyes of the internet Sandy Hook has become synonymous with the most macabre and vicious case study in conspiracy theory. From the day after the shooting the inhuman suggestions that the murders had been ‘staged’ by the American ‘deep state’ or ‘the anti-gun lobby’, that the grieving parents were ‘crisis actors’, and that their children had not been murdered at all, has been fuelled and spread across social media. It is impossible to comprehend the effect that those accusations might have on families such as Richman’s.

Media roundup

The budget dominates the front pages, with the Australian reporting that the Coalition will announce a $1bn boost to freight networks “across Australia” tomorrow. Most of the regional News Corp papers have local variants of the same story, although the Adelaide Advertiser and the NT News both give huge prominence to the AFLW grand final. The Sydney Morning Herald reveals that four in five projects announced by the Morrison government as part of last year’s $1bn urban congestion fund are in marginal Liberal seats. The Herald also reports that an Australian Isis recruit has asked that he, his pregnant wife and their three young children be brought home from Syria, saying he’s prepared to face a long jail sentence in Australia.



Coming up

The Senate report into alleged political interference at the ABC is due to be released today.

British man David Jackson, 57, will face a Perth court on drug charges after being extradited from Cairns where he allegedly tried to escape on a jetski to PNG.

Feeling experimental?

The Guardian’s new audio news briefing. Photograph: The Guardian

We are testing the Guardian Briefing, an audio news briefing adapted for Google Home devices and the Google Assistant. Using a mix of human and synthetic voices, the Guardian Briefing brings you the top headlines in under two minutes, and stays up-to-date throughout the day.

Give it a try by saying “Hey Google, ask for the Guardian Briefing”. It is compatible with Google Assistant-enabled devices including Google Home speakers and Android/iOS smartphones. iPhone users will need to install the free Google Assistant app. You can find out more about the experiment on the Guardian Voice Lab blog. We’d love to hear what you think – help us to get it right by emailing your thoughts to voicelab@theguardian.com.