Good morning, this is Alison Rourke, standing in for Eleanor Ainge Roy, bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 13 December.

Top stories

Environment funding has been slashed by a third since the Coalition took office according to new analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation and WWF Australia. Figures show nearly half a billion dollars has been cut since 2013 and forward estimates show that by 2020-21 the Turnbull government plans to have reduced environment spending to less than 60% of the 2013-14 figure. The ACF economist Matt Rose says the government “has no idea how important the environment is to the wellbeing of Australia, the Australian people, the economy and our sense of who we are.”

Programs to maintain diversity and protect endangered animal and plant populations and ecosystems are among the hardest hit, with their funding to be cut in half across those eight years. The environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the government had “maintained environmental standards while reducing red tape with a one-stop shop for environmental assessments” and pointed to funding for the Great Barrier Reef and a national threatened species strategy. However, the ACF and WWF say the figures show the need for a significant boost in environmental investment in the 2018-19 budget. They called for a new $1.1bn environment fund to boost threatened species recovery, support the expansion and management of protected areas and improve Great Barrier Reef water quality.

Donald Trump has lashed out at a female Democratic senator after she called for his resignation over sexual misconduct accusations. The US president tweeted: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.” The New York senator dubbed the attack a “sexist smear”, hitting back on Twitter minutes later: “You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office.” Trump singled out Gillibrand while ignoring the male senators who have also called on him to step down.

Australian gas prices are still too high, despite government intervention to increase supply to the domestic market, according to competition watchdog the ACCC. Major gas companies agreed in September to increase supply to avoid a domestic shortfall in 2018, a move which meant the Turnbull government didn’t have to impose its threatened export trigger. The ACCC said there had been some improvements in the availability of gas and prices offered to users in the east-coast market, “however, the east coast gas market is still not functioning effectively and domestic prices are still in excess of the ACCC’s estimates of benchmark prices”.

The education minister, Simon Birmingham, has blasted as “woeful” school students’ understanding of government, civic institutions and society values, after the Naplan civics and citizenship test results showed their knowledge of Australian society is either stagnant or declining. For Year 10 students in 2016, just 38% achieved or exceeded the proficient standard, down from 44% in 2013. Birmingham said the results were of “serious concern”. The results were published alongside the final 2017 Naplan scores, which showed that the average reading and numeracy skills of Australian primary school students had improved only marginally in the 10 years since the tests were introduced, while writing skills had deteriorated.



New Zealand has become the first major country to effectively ban vaginal mesh implants in response to safety concerns over the surgery. The health ministry has written to leading mesh suppliers asking them to stop marketing the products from January – or prove that their products are safe. “We’re always cautious about the use of the word ‘ban’, but effectively the companies are agreeing no longer to sell these products ... in New Zealand from the 4th of January,” the ministry’s health spokesman, Stewart Jessamine said. The move goes considerably further than recent announcements in other countries, such as Australia and the UK, which only restrict the use of pelvic mesh operations for organ prolapse.



Sport

Game three of the Ashes gets under way in Perth on Thursday morning, with English opener Alistair Cook playing his 150th Test in what’s been dubbed by the England team the “biggest game of our lives”. England have lost their past seven Tests in Perth and their 2017-18 Ashes campaign is on the brink of petering out, writes Vic Marks.

The Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, and Manchester United’s José Mourinho stood their ground on Tuesday over the tunnel clashes at Old Trafford, Guardiola insisting his team’s celebrations were “definitely not” excessive and Mourinho responding with a barbed remark about his opponents’ conduct. Guardiola is adamant that he and his City team celebrated Sunday’s derby win in an apt and respectful manner. Following the 2-1 victory a scuffle involving up to 20 players and staff of the clubs broke out in the corridor outside City’s dressing room. With many of the details in dispute, the Guardian’s football cartoonist David Squires imagines what might have taken place inside the Old Trafford tunnel.

Thinking time

Gwendoline Christie stars as Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Photograph: AP

Stars Wars fans will feast on an explosive thrill-ride of galactic proportions when The Last Jedi is released on Thursday, says the Guardian’s chief film critic, Peter Bradshaw. He says the excitingly and gigantically proportioned eighth film in the great Star Wars saga is stacked with colossal confrontations, towering indecisions and teetering temptations, spectacular immolations, huge military engagements, and very small disappointments. The character-driven face-offs are wonderful and the messianic succession crisis about the last Jedi of the title is gripping, including the late Carrie Fisher starring as General Leia, Bradshaw says: “The Last Jedi gives you an explosive sugar rush of spectacle. It’s a film that buzzes with belief in itself and its own mythic universe – a euphoric certainty that I think no other movie franchise has.”

The new film from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert director Stephan Elliott, Swinging Safari, is fabulously sly, cynical and a cheeky coming-of-age story, says Luke Buckmaster. The semi-autobiographical slice of 1970s suburbia is, as narrator Richard Roxburgh puts it, a time “with too much time, too much money and too much cask wine.” Starring Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce, Asher Keddie and Julian McMahon, the film whisks the audience into a suburban cul-de-sac, which would be quiet and peaceful were it not for the many graceless dingbats who inhabit it. And for anyone worried that the manic trailer cherry-picks all the kooky bits from the film to make it look more zany, Buckmaster can set your mind at ease. “I can assure you the actual film is 10 times as batshit crazy as the marketing materials suggest.”

Inequality is not a personal choice, it’s a choice governments make, writes Dr John Falzon, chief executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society national council. Falzon says social services minister Christian Porter’s latest attack on welfare recipients is another distraction from the uncomfortable reality of class inequality in the current generation. He says it’s time to come up with innovative solutions to the growing inequality gap, and full employment should be a policy priority. We should be embarking on a serious reframing of how we can, collectively and with common resources, achieve social and economic security for everyone.

Media roundup



The Australian Financial Review splashes on the Lowy family’s $32bn “sale of a lifetime” of their international shopping empire to French property giant Unibail-Rodamco. Frank Lowy is “going out with a bang”, the AFR says, creating and closing an ASX200 company in one generation, walking away with billions, if the deal comes off. The Canberra Times and the Age lead with Sam Dastyari’s fall from grace. Headlined The China Syndrome, the Age says the meltdown of the senator’s career may have a lasting impact. Brisbane’s Courier Mail splashes on local hero Jeff Horn’s boxing bout against Englishman Gary Corcoran on Wednesday night. After fasting for 12 hours before his weigh-in yesterday, the paper says the champ plans to “fuel his body all afternoon and night with electrolyte drinks and pasta”.

Coming up

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse will sit for the final time to mark the end of the investigation. The commissioner, Justice Peter McClellan, will present the National Library of Australia with a book of around 1,000 messages written by survivors of institutional child sexual abuse before the final report is delivered to the attorney general on Thursday.

The program for the 21st biennale of Sydney will be announced.

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