Monday, August 21, 2017

Morning mail: Ann Sudmalis caught up in citizenship debacle

Morning Mail

Morning mail: Ann Sudmalis caught up in citizenship debacle

Tuesday: Liberal MP who holds a marginal NSW seat the latest to face dual citizenship questions. Plus: final Barcelona terrorist suspect shot dead

Ann Sudmalis
Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis speaks in parliament. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Eleanor Ainge Roy


Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 22 August.

Top stories

In the latest chapter of the rolling citizenship scandal in Canberra, a document from 1966 has emerged to trouble Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis, who has previously said she never held British citizenship but declined to release any documents. The incoming passenger card, found in the national archives, shows Sudmalis returned to Australia from overseas at the age of 10 and lists her nationality as British-Australian.

Sudmalis's mother is British, which could mean she is entitled to British citizenship by descent, but her spokesman declined to answer questions about whether she had renounced any such rights. Seven MPs and senators have already been referred to the high court, or will be shortly, after discovering they were citizens or entitled to citizenship of another country.

The man believed to have perpetrated the Barcelona terrorist attack, Younes Abouyaaqoub, has been shot and killed by police. The last known member of the terrorist cell was cornered by armed police while wearing a fake suicide vest in a town 50km west of Barcelona, four days after he drove a van along the crowded tourist boulevard in Las Ramblas, killing 13 people and injuring more than 130. "We were looking for 12 people and they are now all either dead or in custody," said police chief Josep LluĂ­s Trapero. Police said Abouyaaqoub shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) just before he was gunned down outside Subirats, shortly after local people called police to say they believed they had spotted him.

Tony Abbott is heading for the east Kimberley region full of praise for the controversial cashless welfare card. Abbott is still fulfilling the promise he made when he was prime minister to spend a week every year in remote Indigenous communities, but the Labor senator Pat Dodson says he has not heard him talk about improving the lives of people who live there. Dodson has described the cashless welfare card as a "public whip" designed to control Indigenous people.

A second Melbourne council has voted to stop holding its citizenship ceremonies on 26 January, acknowledging the "extreme hurt" felt by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at celebrating a national day on the anniversary of the first fleet's 1788 arrival in Sydney Cove, which some call Invasion Day. Darebin council voted five to two in favour of moving its largest annual citizenship ceremony to another day, despite a written warning from the assistant immigration minister that doing so could see it stripped of the right to hold citizenship ceremonies on any date, as happened to neighbouring Yarra.

A Danish inventor says a Swedish journalist missing since 11 August died in an accident on board his self-built submarine, and that he dumped her body in the sea, police have said. Peter Madsen had previously claimed he last saw Kim Wall when he dropped her off on an island late on 10 August. Danish authorities have been searching for Wall, 30, a reporter who had been writing a feature story about Madsen, since she failed to return from an interview with him on the 18-metre Nautilus. Madsen has been accused of negligent manslaughter.

Sport

When Australia begin their Test tour of Bangladesh this weekend, they will come face to face with the world's top-ranked Test all-rounder. He's not a household name, despite being also rated No1 by the ICC in ODIs and T20s. Yet Shakib Al Hasan tells Tim Wigmore he is used to being overlooked.

The manager of the England women's football team, Mark Sampson, is alleged to have told one of his players to make sure her Nigerian relatives did not bring Ebola to a game at Wembley, according to extraordinary new evidence in the Eni Aluko hush-money case. Aluko told the Guardian that the Football Association had known about the comment since November 2016 but chose to ignore it despite a previous allegation against Sampson.

Thinking time

US eclipse
People wearing solar eclipse glasses watch the phenomenon in Nebraska. Photograph: Nati Harnik/AP

The US has been transfixed as a total eclipse swept across the continent. The Guardian's Charlotte Simmonds was in Big Summit Prairie, Oregon, feeling the temperature drop and hearing dogs bark as darkness began to fall. "As the moment of totality approached, shouts and applause filled the air. At 10.19am – the moment of totality – people embraced as the sky fell dark, stars came out, and the sun's extraordinary corona was visible for a brief few minutes." Donald Trump was among those watching, although he had to be warned by staff not to look directly at the sun without wearing his solar glasses. The Guardian's live blog captured many more accounts from around the US.

Could the ABC's live music program Recovery be made today? The show, which ran from 1996 to 2000 and was partly modelled on Countdown, was a chaotic collision of freewheeling improvisation, weird comedy sketches and live performances from international and Australian bands such as Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Silverchair, Spiderbait, Grinspoon and Regurgitator. Nathan Dunne gives his view here.

Greg Jericho says employer groups seem happier with the enterprise bargaining system than unions, and ponders whether a shift in policy is needed. "With workers now almost resigned to low wage growth, the belief that a hands-off approach to IR is the best for the economy – and workers – might be ready to be challenged," he writes.

What's he done now?

With 10 American sailors missing and five injured after the guided-missile destroyer USS John S McCain collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore, Donald Trump might have been distracted from his usual obsessions. But in the past 24 hours he has published one tweet on the missing American sailors – and three reiterating his loathing for "fake news".

"Thank you, the very dishonest Fake News Media is out of control!" he tweeted.

"Jerry Falwell of Liberty University was fantastic on @foxandfriends. The Fake News should listen to what he had to say. Thanks Jerry!"

"Heading back to Washington after working hard and watching some of the worst and most dishonest Fake News reporting I have ever seen!"

Media roundup

The Age splashes with a mega-property deal, revealing one of Melbourne's most prestigious private schools, Scotch College, has continued its aggressive expansion by buying a neighbouring house for almost $1m above reserve, meaning the college now owns all but 11 of 27 houses in Hawthorn's Hambledon Road. The West Australian has a striking front page featuring a bed loaded with guns. The paper says the state government is considering giving police sweeping new powers to restrict gun licences after an apparent spike in drive-by shootings and woundings. And the ABC has a useful explainer on why this year's flu season has been so bad, with infections appearing earlier in the year than usual and hitting historic highs in some states.

Coming up

Google and Facebook will be appearing before the Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism in Sydney.

It's day two of the International Joint Conference on artificial intelligence, where 2,000 of the world's top robotics and AI experts are gathering to discuss the big questions about technology's future – and watch robots play soccer.

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