Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 1 February. Apologies for our late arrival yesterday – we hate being late to the party. Top stories Malcolm Turnbull delivers an agenda-setting speech in regional Queensland today, focusing on corporate and personal tax cuts to stimulate the economy. The prime minister will talk up the prospect of wages growth – because "the laws of supply and demand have not been suspended", according to speech notes seen by Guardian Australia. And he plans to use the speech to argue he has delivered on the rationale he offered when he took the Liberal party leadership from Tony Abbott in 2015 – "to provide the economic leadership that Australia needed". With the Coalition trailing Labor in major opinion polls for the whole of 2017, a slump exacerbated by internal ill-discipline and infighting – including frequent public interventions by Abbott – Turnbull will frame the new political year as a time when the government needs to "stay the course". "Despite Canberra being a hothouse which thrives on pessimism and political distractions, we delivered on many of our plans last year, and we have more to do now," he will say. Unnecessary greyhound deaths are still occurring at levels seen before New South Wales repealed its industry ban, internal figures reveal. Details of greyhound deaths in NSW suggest the industry is making little progress on its August 2016 guarantee that "no greyhound will be unnecessarily euthanised". Data obtained by the Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi suggests unnecessary euthanasia has continued largely unabated, with 330 greyhounds euthanised between April last year, when the ban was formally repealed, and 31 December. That's a rate of about 1.3 deaths per day. The refugee emergency along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border is a crisis of the young, with generations-long repercussions for the region, and the world, writes immigration correspondent Ben Doherty. Since 25 August more than 668,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar for camps over the Bangladesh border. Nearly 400,000 of those are children, a figure that will rise as new families arrive still, and infants are born in the camps. Majuma Begum, 18, says soldiers came in the darkness to her village of Boli Bazaar and she watched the soldiers work systematically through it, torching homes and executing those who did not, or could not, flee. Seven months pregnant, she ran. The boy she gave birth to in the teaming refugee camp is called Anwar:his name means light. A man repeatedly abused as a child at the Turana Boys' Home and at a Salvation Army institution in Victoria has implored the prime minister not to exclude criminals who were victims of childhood sexual abuse from accessing a national redress scheme. National redress scheme legislation has been referred to a Senate inquiry over concerns about the opt-in nature for some institutions, the amount of redress available, and anger that survivors who went on to commit serious crimes would be barred. In a submission to the inquiry, a man who chose to remain anonymous wrote: "I would have been all right in life if it hadn't been for the sexual abuse committed against me, and rejections by the system, so how can you, Mr Turnbull, judge me as not being eligible for compensation on the grounds of criminality?I was a system-made problem." The BBC is "in real trouble" over the equal pay row that has rocked the organisation, Carrie Gracie has said in extremely damaging evidence to MPs. Gracie resigned as China editor earlier this month in protest at the "secretive and illegal" pay culture at the BBC. "I knew I'd give the China job every last ounce of my skin and stamina. I knew I would do that job at least as good as any man," she said. "I insisted on equal pay. I thought I had won a commitment to pay parity when I set off to China which is why I got such a shock [when BBC salaries were revealed].". Her comments will increase the pressure on the BBC over pay equality, which began when the broadcaster's pay list revealed that two-thirds of its best paid on-air staff were men, and Gracie's male colleagues in equivalent roles were earning 50% more than her. Sport Hannah Mouncey has every reason to say AFLW is not inclusive, given she was barred the right to nominate in the draft. Howeverher experience of women's football is as a game that embraces diversity in all its forms. In AFLW, the AFL has been gifted a product where inclusivity is key to success. German football star Mesut Özil is set to bolster Arsenal's side by agreeing to a new £350,000-a-week deal. The midfielder will sign on to the club for three years, and may soon be joined by Jack Wilshere if he and Arsenal sign too – a deal which is close. Thinking time |
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