Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 2 May.

Top stories

Clive Palmer’s United Australia party has taken extraordinary steps to avoid a repeat of the “Jacqui Lambie problem” by getting candidates to sign contracts that require them to return $400,000 in election support if they win a seat but subsequently leave the party. Guardian Australia has spoken to numerous UAP candidates about the contracts. The candidates confirmed they had signed the agreements which commit to them reimbursing their share of UAP’s extensive advertising budget (said to be between $30 and $50m) that billionaire Palmer is deploying to support his United Australia party. Several candidates said each candidate would be up for around $400,000 in expenditure. Candidates also filmed scripted, word-for-word videos for Facebook decrying the foreign ownership of Australian ports.

Australians remain overwhelmingly confused about national energy policy, with a new poll showing about 40% of voters are unsure which party has the best approach to affordability, reliability and emissions reduction. On the question of which party has the best plan to reduce carbon emissions, 40% of the 1,536 people polled last month thought Labor’s policy was better, compared with just 22% who chose the Coalition. But 38% of voters remained unsure – only slightly down from the 40% of people who answered the same when the poll was last conducted two years ago.

Today Labor will unveil a $75m renewable jobs package as it continues to campaign hard on climate change, while the prime minister, Scott Morrison, will pledge $308m to reduce the safety net for free medicines. The competing funding promises come as both leaders return to Tasmania, where the Labor-held seats of Braddon and Bass are seen as vulnerable. Shorten says his package will help create 70,000 new jobs, including support for 10,000 apprentices in clean energy industries, while Morrison’s pledge will benefit about 1.4 million people, with individuals saving an average of $80 a year.

The gas company AGL asked the Victorian government to change a wastewater policy that could be used to block the proposed Crib Point gas import terminal. The company wants to build a 290m-long floating storage and regasification unit at Crib Point in Western Port Bay, 80km south-east of Melbourne. The unit would use seawater as part of a heat exchange to convert shipments of imported liquid natural gas back into gas, but the discharged water would be 0.3C cooler than the ambient seawater and contain chlorine rates of 0.0005mg/L. There is no declared safe level for chlorine in Australian marine environments, but the maximum safe concentration for freshwater is 0.003mg/L.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Julian Assange has been sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching bail conditions.

Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be jailed for just under a year for breaching bail conditions to avoid being extradited to Sweden. “You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country,” said Judge Deborah Taylor during sentencing.

Theresa May has sacked Gavin Williamson as defence secretary over the leak from the National Security Council about Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network. Williamson is a former close ally of May and the former chief whip.

Nicolás Maduro claims his troops have thwarted a botched attempt to topple him, masterminded by Venezuela’s “coup-mongering far right” and Donald Trump’s deranged imperialist “gang”. Escalating the tension, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Wednesday that US military action in the country was a possibility “if required”. Juan Guaidó, the young opposition leader who led that attempted mutiny on Tuesday morning, told demonstrators in the capital, Caracas, they needed to intensify their “peaceful rebellion” against Maduro.

Populists across the world are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations, global warming and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a landmark global survey shared exclusively with the Guardian. The research may go some way towards understanding the success of rightwing populists such as Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

A human jawbone found in a cave on the Tibetan plateau has revealed new details about the appearance and lifestyle of a mysterious ancient species called Denisovans.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, who is in Australia for the Sydney writers’ festival. Photograph: SWF



Few people have done more to get to the truth of the case of Mexico’s 43 missing students than the investigative journalist Anabel Hernández. The journalist whose investigation exposed evidence of systemic corruption talks about why the notorious case should be a warning for all. “The problem is that when we talk about these kind of things it is like corruption is something you cannot touch,” she tells Guardian Australia. “This book shows how corruption can kill. How corruption can disappear and torture people. How it can hurt a country like Mexico.”

Australia’s cost of living remains low, so why are we still feeling the pinch? Inflation has grown 9.7% since the 2013 election, but household incomes have grown only 7.8%, which makes for a 1.7% fall in standard of living, writes Greg Jericho. “There are a couple of golden rules of politics. The first is never go into a strip club with an undercover reporter while drunk and then abuse the women working there, but a close second is never, ever suggest cost of living pressures are anything but tightening.”

Sport

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Israel Folau. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA

Israel Folau’s fate may be sealed at his Rugby Australia code of conduct hearing this weekend – but more likely any decision will be a starting point for further action. Whatever the hearing determines it will be a landmark decision in both the history of Australian sport and workplace relations because of the unprecedented nature of the dispute.

Caster Semenya is considering an appeal after losing her landmark legal case against athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, in a decision that could end her career as an elite athlete. The court of arbitration for sport may have come down on one side of the debate but its ruling contained enough holes and caveats to mean the dispute will continue, writes Andy Bull.

Thinking time: The battle for Australia’s most marginal seat

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charlie Murison on the Strand Townsville. He says, ‘people just want work. And it’s not coming.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Guardian Australia’s political reporter Amy Remeikis takes you to Townsville to explain how Queensland electorates differ vastly from those in other states. Herbert is Australia’s most marginal seat, and it appears that three years of campaigning hasn’t shifted the balance.

“I don’t know,” Charlie Murison says when asked who he’ll vote for.

“None of them?”

“I just think a lot of people want work to come through. That’s Townsville’s problem. Forget all that other bullshit, people just want work. And it’s not coming.”

But the politicians are. With just 37 votes tipping the electorate in Labor candidate Cathy O’Toole’s favour at the last election, Newspoll has the seat still locked at 50/50 on the two-party-preferred measure, suggesting the battle for Herbert is not just between the Liberal National party and Labor, but for minor-party preferences.

Clive Palmer is the latest to woo disillusioned Townsville voters, but will he hold any appeal after the Nickel refinery debacle?

“I don’t mind Palmer, I’ll be honest,” says Anne Mason, a long-time LNP voter. “I agree with a lot of what he’s saying. I think a lot of people have moved on from what happened with the refinery. And he said he’s going to pay people back.”

Hear more on Herbert in this Australia politics live podcast.

Media roundup

The leader of an Australian far-right white supremacist group has revealed that it tried to recruit alleged Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, approaching him online to see if wanted to help create a “parallel society” only for white people. Convicted sex offender David Degning is set to remain in Australia after winning a federal court appeal against home affairs minister Peter Dutton, who attempted to deport him to the UK based on character grounds, the ABC reports. And the Age is reporting that Melbourne’s “little streets” could be periodically closed and 30km of new bike lanes installed under local council’s plans to make inner-city Melbourne more pedestrian friendly.

Coming up

Health minister Greg Hunt and Labor spokeswoman Catherine King face off in a debate at the National Press Club.

AMP will hold its AGM. AMP faces a possible second strike on executive pay and the chance of a board spill when it fronts up to shareholders following a wretched year of scandals and a nosediving share price.

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