Morning mail: Australia's extinction crisis Tuesday: The Guardian exposes the animals at risk – and the failures to save those who were lost. Plus: Australia's first Winter Olympics medal The Leadbeater's possum is one of Australia's endangered species. Photograph: Zoos Victoria Eleanor Ainge Roy @EleanorAingeRoy Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 13 February. Top stories Australia's unfolding extinction crisis has been labelled a "national disgrace" and is the latest focus of the Guardian's Our wide brown land environmental series. The mammal at the centre of this story is an uncharismatic rodent living a remote part of the country: the Bramble Cay melomys. The key factor in the extinction of the rodent was almost certainly ocean inundation of the low-lying cay in the Torres Strait but recovery efforts were insufficient and hampered by disagreement within government agencies over approaches – in this case captive breeding. And while it was clear urgent action should be taken; the plan was implemented too late, relegating Australia's only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier Reef an extinct species. "It could have been saved," says John Woinarski, a professor of conservation biology. The fate of the melomys is symptomatic of the failures in Australia's management of threatened species, which has seen the country lose more than 50 animal and 60 plant species in the past 200 years and record the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world over that period. Find out more about some of Australia's most endangered species in this interactive. Oxfam's deputy chief executive, Penny Lawrence, has resigned after it emerged that allegations about staff in Haiti and Chad using sex workers were not acted on. Oxfam's chief executive, Mark Goldring, said: "Penny feels that happened on her watch and she takes responsibility." Her resignation came after a meeting between senior staff and the UK's international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, who has threatened to remove the charity's state funding. Haiti is also threatening to take legal action against the Oxfam staff involved. An emphatic majority of Australians want a pay rise if companies get a tax cut, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll. The poll of 1,026 respondents shows 72% approve of forcing businesses to pass on a proportion of their tax cuts to workers, and the approval for that trade-off stretches across all voting groups. The government is vowing to press ahead with its proposed company tax cuts despite the fact published polling suggests the idea is politically unpopular. . Is it appropriate for Barnaby Joyce to accept free rent from a prominent businessman in his electorate – particularly one who's been at the centre of local political intrigue? That question is ricocheting around Armidale after revelations that Greg Maguire, the millionaire businessman who owns the Powerhouse Hotel in Armidale and numerous businesses in Tamworth, is providing the deputy PM and his new partner and former media adviser, Vikki Campion, with a free townhouse. The Australian Border Force has ordered the deportation of a Sri Lankan asylum seeker, despite fears he will be tortured if he returns home. In October the UN requested Australia refrain from returning the Tamil asylum seeker Shantaruban to Sri Lanka while his complaint was under consideration. Shantaruban arrived in Australia by boat in 2012. Having been released to live in the community, he was redetained in 2015 and has remained in immigration detention since. . Last July the UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson visited Sri Lanka and reported that "the use of torture, has been, and remains today, endemic and routine, for those arrested and detained on national security grounds". Sport Matt Graham became Australia's first medallist of the 2018 Winter Olympics when he took silver in the moguls skiing behind the sport's undisputed leader, Mikaël Kingsbury of Canada. Last week Graham, 23, from Gosford, New South Wales, said he could win. And on Monday night he skied like he believed it. What's the matter with Manchester United? Their play is flat, the manager is becalmed, and star signing Paul Pogba is inconsistent for starters, writes Manchester football correspondent Jamie Jackson after United's 1-0 defeat by Newcastle. Thinking time Candles spell out 'Sorry the first step' in front of Parliament House. Photograph: Mark Graham/AP "It is crucial that we not permit 13 February to become a virtue signalling mechanism for the commonwealth of Australia," writes Jack Latimore for IndigenousX, on the 10th anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations. Any government emphasis on the apology has to acknowledge the ongoing impacts of the forced removals of First Nations children from their families and communities, Latimore says. "13 February needs to be the sharpest spur to the side of government, not a public relations celebration of soft reconciliation." Clem Bastow plunges into the immersive theatre experience of Alone. The Sequence, in Melbourne and finds it conjures up many of her worst fears. "As a shrieking Pollyanna pops a balloon in my face while a strobe light flashes unrelentingly, I wonder if the 'immersive theatre experience' I have entered is in fact a carefully tailored vision of my own personal hell," she writes. Bastow's solo journey through laneways, crawlspaces and abandoned offices is "part haunted house, part theatresports experiment and part excruciating audience participation". If we want to boost women's retirement savings, we have to focus on how much they're paid during their working lives, writes Greg Jericho. The Grattan Institute's Brendan Coates has studied the enduring problem of the gender pay gap in retirement and found men's superannuation balances at retirement are twice as large as women's, on average, with men also having much larger non-superannuation savings. . What's he done now? Donald Trump has criticised $7tn of US spending in the Middle East as stupid and said it's time to invest in US infrastructure. But the Washington Post has crunched the numbers and reports that Trump is way off, with experts saying the number is about $1.8tn since 2001. Media roundup The NT News splashes with a full-page image of Malcolm Turnbull, reporting that the PM has made "empty promises" to the territory, visiting just three times during his 591-day term. Most Australian papers feature Barnaby Joyce on their front pages today, with the Australian reporting that theformer Nationals leader John ­Anderson has told him to take responsibility for the political fallout caused by his affair with a staffer. The ABC reports on the rearrest of the former Melbourne school principal Malka Leifer, who Israeli police allege faked a mental illness to avoid deportation to Australia, where she is facing 74 charges of child sexual abuse. Coming up The full bench of the high court will decide whether the Skye Kakoschke-Moore, who quit parliament over her dual British citizenship, is eligible to get her seat back. The former Nick Xenophon Team senator was to be replaced by Tim Storer but he has quit the party and she argues this renders him ineligible to take the seat. The Inner West council will be the first in Sydney to formally consider scrapping its Australia Day celebrations today as part of a Greens-led campaign to change the date. 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