Good morning, this is Mike Ticher bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 31 July.

Top stories

Disposable income has stagnated since 2009, rates of home ownership among young adults have fallen and housing stress among renters has risen, according to the latest survey of Australian households. The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, released on Tuesday, has interviewed the same households and individuals every year since 2001.



The Hilda survey also found the nationwide poverty rate had declined since 2001, and the child poverty rate is the lowest it has been in 16 years. But a separate report from Acoss and the University of NSW into inequality has found those at the bottom of the wealth scale are losing touch with those at the top. It says the richest 20% of Australian households own 62% of all wealth, while the lowest 50% own just 18%. The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said the report “deeply challenges our sense of Australia as an egalitarian country”.

The archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, has quit from his position two months after he was convicted of concealing child abuse. The pope accepted Wilson’s resignation last night in a further sign of the Vatican’s struggle to contain the abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic church. In May, Wilson became the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of not disclosing abuse by another priest. The case centred on the abuse of two altar boys by James Fletcher in the 1970s. Wilson has appealed against the conviction.

Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has angrily compared Michael Cohen, the president’s former longtime lawyer, to the famous traitors Benedict Arnold, Brutus and Iago. Giuliani called Cohen a “scumbag” and “a really bad guy” during a rambling, 32-minute interview on CNN on Monday. Cohen, whose premises and home were raided by the FBI in April, has strongly hinted he may help investigators looking into Russian election interference and links between Trump aides and Moscow. Asked what it might say about Trump that a man once so close to him had turned on him, Giuliani referred to Shakespeare: “He turned out to have a close friend betray him, like Iago betrayed Othello, like Brutus put the last knife into Caesar.”

A refugee who died in the Christmas Island jungle after scaling fences at the immigration detention centre triggered two security alarms during his escape but guards failed to act, an inquest has heard. Stateless refugee Fazel Chegeni Nejad, 34, had survived torture in Iran but had a history of mental health problems when he died in November 2015. His body was found lying face down about 50 metres from the detention centre in an area that had already been searched almost two days earlier. In 2015 Guardian Australia revealed how Chegeni had been granted refugee status, but sent back to detention by the then immigration minister Scott Morrison after he pleaded guilty to an assault, and remained there despite repeated concerns about his mental health.



Millions of people have voted peacefully in Zimbabwe’s first election since the removal of Robert Mugabe, choosing between the president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, a longtime Mugabe aide and head of the ruling Zanu-PF party, and Nelson Chamisa, 40, who leads the Movement for Democratic Change. Turnout on Monday appeared extremely high, with long lines of voters forming outside polling stations. Full results are not due until later in the week. Whoever wins faces the daunting challenge of beginning to repair the country’s shattered economy, soaring unemployment and crumbling infrastructure.

Sport

With the new Premier League season just around the corner, discontent is bubbling over at Manchester United, whose manager, Jose Mourinho, has resorted to increasingly bizarre complaints about the club, his players and referees. United insist Mourinho still has official backing but his complaints are serving to galvanise rivals while demoralising his own players, writes Jamie Jackson.

French newspapers have floated the idea of a salary cap for Tour de France teams, pointing out that the budget of overall winner Geraint Thomas’s Team Sky is about twice the size of Sunweb, the squad of second-placed Tom Dumoulin. The daily Libération, supporting the idea of a cap, warned there had been a combination of “disillusioned anger” from fans and “icy indifference” from the public during this year’s Tour.

Thinking time

The teenage Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi has said she used her eight months in prison as an opportunity to study international law and hopes to one day to lead cases against Israel in international courts. Tamimi, who rose to global prominence as a child living under military occupation in the village of Nabi Saleh, was arrested in December after slapping and kicking Israeli soldiers on camera outside her home, then was tried behind closed doors. She said she and other Palestinians in her all-female prison unit would sit for hours and learn legal texts. “We managed to transform the jail into a school,” she told the Guardian one day after her release.

A change of government at the next federal election looks more likely after Labor’s success at this weekend’s byelections, including a big swing in the critical seat of Longman. Bill Shorten’s poor personal approval rates in polling are secondary, argues Peter Lewis. “The first Gen X leader of his generation, he will win government on traditional Labor values and govern as a progressive centrist with the interpersonal skills to manage a united and ambitious team with a long-term plan for a fairer Australia.”



When Tom Cruise pitched the idea of Mission: Impossible to Paramount in 1992, the studio did a double take. “People looked at me a little cross-eyed because it was a TV series and at that time people weren’t really doing that,” Cruise said. But this weekend, Mission: Impossible – Fallout had the best critical approval in the US of Cruise’s entire career, better even than the three films that scored him Oscar nominations. Amy Nicholson looks at the enduring appeal of what seemed an unlikely franchise.



Media roundup

The Advertiser covers its front page with the resignation of Philip Wilson as Adelaide archbishop after his conviction for covering up child sexual abuse. The Mercury has more fallout from the sacking of Angela Williamson by Cricket Australia, which she says was the result of her social media comments about Tasmania’s abortion policy. The health minister, Michael Ferguson, has denied the state government lobbied Cricket Australia to sack Williamson. And the NT News reports that a large object, possibly a fuel tank, fell from a plane taking part in the Pitch Black military exercise, narrowly missing power and water workers in bushland near Darwin.

Coming up

Mark Butler and Richard Di Natale will be among the speakers at the Clean Energy Summit, which opens in Sydney.



The inquest into the death of Fazel Chegeni Nejad continues in Perth.



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