Morning mail: Cop26 fallout, Australia wins T20 World Cup, housing dreams broken

Monday: What does the Glasgow climate pact mean for Australia and will the Morrison government deliver? Plus: the ‘broken dream’ of living in Melbourne’s outer suburbs

Good morning. Around the world, people mourn the failure of Cop26. Australian taxpayers are paying at least $59m for government advertising campaigns in the lead-up to elections. And the start of a new series on Australian housing.

The Glasgow climate package, aimed at ensuring the world limits global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, was acknowledged even by the UK hosts as “imperfect”, and leaves much of the hard work on cutting greenhouse gas emissions for next year. These are the main points in the text, highlighting that current national plans on cutting emissions are inadequate and that language on phasing out coal is weak. The United States climate envoy John Kerry said this agreement will bring the world closer than it has ever been to the goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C while Guardian columnist George Monbiot called the deal a “suicide pact.” What does it mean for Australia? It is unclear whether Australia will respect the terms of the text, with senior minister Greg Hunt refusing to say if Australia under a Morrison government will update its 2030 emissions target as required under the Cop26 Glasgow agreement.

Australian taxpayers are paying at least $59m for major government advertising campaigns to run in the lead-up to the 2022 election. The campaigns span the topics of cybercrime and online safety, the job trainer program, domestic violence, recruiting a carer workforce and, most controversially, climate change, as the government seeks to explain its road to Damascus conversation on the net zero by 2050 target. According to AusTender contracts and evidence to Senate estimates, the industry department spent a total of $12.9m excluding GST on the Positive Energy campaign, which ran from September in the lead-up to the Glasgow Cop26 climate talks.

When Jade Seenarain and his wife Aideanna bought the plot for their home in Truganina in Melbourne’s west in 2015, the couple thought they were buying into a leafy, suburban dream. But three years after moving into their home, reality bears little resemblance to the life the Seenarains thought they would be living. “It’s a broken dream,” Seenarain says. In the first of a short series on Australian housing, Elias Visontay examines how Victoria’s planning system is failing residents and the environment. In Truganina, plans for a local school have been derailed, and plots of land still lie empty while residents wait for shops, services and infrastructure. Urban planning experts say it’s a common situation across the city’s outer suburbs.

Australia

The NSW government’s latest attempt to restructure how public transport assets are funded – through the establishment of the Transport Asset Holding Entity – has been labelled “cooking the books on a grand scale”. A parliamentary inquiry has heard allegations that treasury officials pressured transport figures and independent assessors who raised concerns about the financial and safety implications of the new body into reevaluating their findings.

Governments must set a date for banning the sale of cigarettes through retailers, and find new ways of boosting revenue without relying on tobacco excise taxes, leading public health researchers say.

The end to the National Affordability Rental Scheme could leave thousands at the whim of the private market. The Abbott government scrapped the scheme in 2014, grandfathering the homes already on it but not allowing new ones to join. That means that over the next three years, the vast majority of NRAS properties are going to lose their subsidy.

The world

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, one of the sons of the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has confirmed that he will run for the presidency of Libya in elections due to start on 24 December.

The Queen was absent from Remembrance Sunday commemorations after spraining her back, leaving other members of the royal family to honour the UK’s war dead in public. The monarch, 95, had been under doctor’s orders to rest for almost a month after spending a night in hospital in October.

Confidence in Joe Biden continues to plunge amid a crisis over inflation and supply chain problems. In alarming news for the White House, only 41% of voters approved of Biden in a Washington Post/ABC survey published on Sunday, continuing a steady downward trend in the president’s ratings.

The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called for Nato to take “concrete steps” to solve the migrant crisis on Europe’s border as dozens of asylum seekers reportedly broke through Poland’s border defences with Belarus.

Recommended reads

In modern Australia, why must caring for your family come second to your work duties? Van Badham argues Australia should collect tax and disburse it through a variety of government-sponsored support for people’s caring commitments. “We could relieve families of intersecting economic, industrial and domestic pressure, simultaneously create local jobs, as well as hugely boost local productivity,” says Badham.

Ahead of the season two premiere, the Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara explains his fresh, bawdy and wilfully anachronistic take on Catherine the Great. “I like the stakes of the era, the life and death stakes of the court world,” McNamara says. “I also like that they’re dealing with stuff we’re still freakin’ dealing with … We’re still dealing with privilege, and how to give people equality.”

It’s Bondi Hipster Christiaan Van Vuuren, but not as you know him. Maddie Thomas asks what the comedian’s doing sniffing around the political arena in his debut docuseries Big Deal, which premiered on the ABC in October. “Across two one-hour episodes directed by political satire writer Craig Reucassel (The Chaser’s War on Everything, The Hamster Decides), Van Vuuren has some uncomfortable revelations as he follows the money trail in Australian politics: scrutinising the conduct of the fossil fuel, gun and gambling lobbies, as well as the political parties that lap up their gargantuan donations.”

Listen

When Adelaide United’s Josh Cavallo sat down to film his announcement to the world that he was coming out as gay, he didn’t know what to expect. Cavallo tells Michael Safithat the response has been overwhelming as messages of support have poured in from around the world and from fellow players such as Gerard Piqué, Marcus Rashford and Antoine Griezmann.

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

Sport

Australia has won their first T20 World Cup with an eight-wicket victory over New Zealand. They had promised to attack this game with bravery and aggression and their assault on a target of 173 left New Zealand punch drunk, with Mitch Marsh leading what amounted to a gleeful pile-on on a previously outstanding group of bowlers as his team raced to the finish line with seven balls to spare.

Australia has won their first The Wallabies face the ignominy of losing all of their Tests on a spring tour of Europe for the first time in the professional era if they do not address the ill-discipline which contributed so heavily to their defeats to Scotland and England, says Bret Harris. After a caning from French referee Romain Poite in their 15-13 loss to Scotland at Murrayfield two weeks ago, the Wallabies were penalised 18 to nine by South African referee Jaco Peyper in their 32-15 loss to England at Twickenham last Sunday morning.

Media roundup

The Chinese embassy in Canberra has lodged an official complaint with the Australian parliament about a speech made by Liberal senator James Paterson in which he accused Beijing of trying to divide democratic states, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.The ABC examines how vaccine mandates and lockdowns have become the ‘Trojan Horse’ of New Zealand’s far-right.And there are calls for Queensland to open its borders earlier than planned, according to the Courier-Mail.

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