Morning mail: Coalition backlash over India ban, sea lions under threat, magazine secrets

Tuesday: Opposition growing over decision to ban Australians from returning from the Covid-ravaged country. Plus: what happened when editors got drunk on the power of retouching

Good morning. The government’s India travel ban is facing a significant backlash, including within the Coalition’s ranks, as India’s coronavirus outbreak continues to see record numbers of infections, and health services remain unable to cope with shortages of vaccines and oxygen.

Several Coalition MPs spoke to Guardian Australia on and off the record with their concerns over the “extreme” and “heavy-handed” decision to criminalise returning to Australia from Covid-ravaged India. The Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said: “I am concerned about this decision and most especially regarding the precedent it sets for making it illegal for Australians to return home to Australia.”

One member of the government said the biosecurity powers were “an insane level of power for a single minister to wield”. The government insists its determination is lawful but experts say it is open to legal challenge. The extreme use of powers most people didn’t know were on the books has generated a storm of criticism. Paul Karp looks at how the ban came about – and the possible legal challenges.

In India, plans to vaccinate all adults have been hampered by vaccine shortages, with fewer than half of the country’s states able to begin vaccinating over-18s amid warnings the shortfall could last months. The government has been accused of complacency and a lack of forward planning when it came to ensuring there would be enough vaccines for its population of more than 1.3 billion. Only 12 of India’s 36 states and union territories have had enough vaccines in stock to begin vaccinating over-18s.

A senior Queensland police officer says there has been a “concerning increase” in the number of police accused of domestic violence – something the organisation’s leadership is “grappling” with how to respond to. The assistant commissioner Brian Codd said he could not offer “a 100% guarantee” that women seeking help would not encounter abusers in uniform or officers with problematic attitudes, and acknowledged that police should be held to a higher standard.

Australia

The population of Australia’s only unique seal has fallen by 60%, according to a new study. The number of Australian sea lion pups is now at just 2,739, with chemicals and fishing practices the probable causes behind the decline in numbers.

The secret trial and imprisonment of a former intelligence officer was “unprecedented”, reminiscent of authoritarian regimes and should never be repeated, Australia’s national security laws watchdog has been told. Witness J, a former military intelligence officer, pleaded guilty to the disclosure of confidential information and served out a sentence without any public knowledge.

A federal government proposal by the treasurer to place restrictions on firms advising super funds on how to vote at annual shareholder meetings has been slammed as a “Trumpian brainfart”. Josh Frydenberg’s attack on the sector comes after an investor group said it would advise members to vote against directors who fail to tackle the climate crisis.

A $371m biosecurity package that puts a “protective ring” around the agricultural sector is to be announced by Scott Morrison, three years after the Coalition’s failed attempt to introduce a biosecurity levy on industry.

The world

German police have shut down one of the largest websites for child sexual abuse images in the world. Four German men including the site’s administrators have been arrested for their involvement in the platform, which had more than 400,000 international subscribers and was active for almost two years.

Joe Biden says it is time for corporations and the richest Americans to “start paying their fair share” of taxes and has made a case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to help fund his ambitious $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan.

A former restaurant manager serving 10 years in prison for effectively enslaving a man has been ordered to double the restitution costs to his former worker to more than half a million dollars.

Recommended reads

“Beyoncé looked glorious on my magazine cover. ‘Are you going to lighten her skin?’ my boss asked.” Being urged to retouch then re-retouch the singer’s photo left Justine Cullen shaken. In this extract from her new book she recalls the “cookie cutter” cycle her industry was trapped in. “This was back in the early days of retouching, when magazine publishers were drunk on the relatively new power in their hands. Cover stars were not only made smoother, slimmer and whiter but sometimes given Frankenstein-style makeovers, with different shots of a model’s head and body being mixed and matched, or sometimes a head being patched on to someone else’s body altogether. Thank god the industry eventually learned the error of its ways, but some real atrocities occurred before it did.”

At 21, Kathryn Heyman didn’t have the luxury of “finding herself” on a gap year like her peers. She had no money, no safety net and had learned to never rely upon others. Instead, she hitchhiked to Darwin with her journals and favourite books – and notions of a Kerouac-style adventure – and bagged a job as a cook on a fishing trawler, a boat called the Ocean Thief. She was later relegated to deckhand when it was discovered she could barely boil an egg. Fury is Heyman’s first memoir. It’s powerful, masterful and something she never expected to write.

After the sharp recession, there is little sense of a booming recovery, writes Greg Jericho. “Slowly the reserve bank and the Treasury have realised that the old rules that seemed to work during the 1990s and mining boom no longer do, but will next week’s budget reflect this? Last week the Treasury department caught up with the real world and realised that wages growth is weak and underemployment is high and as result what we call ‘full employment’ – or more technically the ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’ – is lower than it used to be.”

Listen

Seaspiracy, the Netflix documentary on the impact of commercial fishing, has received celebrity endorsements and a huge audience around the world, but it has also attracted criticism from experts who accuse it of making misleading claims. In today’s Full Story, Anushka Asthana speaks with George Monbiot about some of the murkiest aspects of the fishing industry and with marine ecologist Bryce Stewart, who argues that fishing can be done sustainably, and that Seaspiracy’s take on the issue is overly simplistic.

Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.

Sport

Australia’s cricket vice-captain Pat Cummins and other members of Kolkata’s squad are isolating after two teammates contracted Covid, forcing Indian Premier League organisers to postpone a match.

Media roundup

The federal government has announced a $10bn reinsurance pool, or guarantee for insurers, aimed at dropping unaffordable insurance bills for people in cyclone-affected regions, the Courier-Mail reports. The foreign minister, Marise Payne, has attacked efforts to “buy influence’’ and “pick off’’ individual countries in a diplomatic rebuke aimed at China in an opinion piece for the Australian. Australia Post executives have been accused of hosting a $500,000 taxpayer-funded corporate party just weeks after the former chief executive Christine Holgate lost her job over $20,000 in watches gifted to top managers, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Coming up

A Senate inquiry will hold hearings on changes to federal environmental laws.

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