Good morning. A transparency advocate has said the body established by Scott Morrison with only one permanent member – himself – was “an abuse of process”. Whistleblower Richard Boyle has alleged the tax office blocked him from helping individuals and one senior staff member said “I am sick of taxpayers threatening suicide”. And Donald Trump’s own legal team has said he could be indicted over the investigation into his retention of government secrets.
Scott Morrison’s secretive cabinet committee of one permanent member appears to have met hundreds of times in the last term of parliament, documents released under freedom of information have revealed. The cabinet office policy committee (COPC) – of which Morrison was listed as the only permanent member – created 739 sets of minutes from meetings, the information released by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) showed. It has sparked fresh warnings from the former senator Rex Patrick that the body was an “abuse of process”, and prompted calls to release its documents, or to expand the inquiry into Morrison’s multiple ministries, as proposed by the Greens.
Four Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine have said they are planning to hold “referendums” on joining the Russian Federation in a series of coordinated announcements that could indicate the Kremlin has made a decision to formally annex the territories. Moscow may be betting that a formal annexation would help halt Russian territorial losses, after a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reclaimed large portions of territory in the Kharkiv region. But Ukraine and the west have indicated that they will not recognise the annexations – and that Russia’s new territorial claims will not slow Ukraine reclaiming its sovereign land.
Whistleblower Richard Boyle has alleged the Australian Taxation Office took a “callous” approach to taxpayers who expressed suicidal thoughts while being chased for debts. Boyle has also alleged he was blocked from helping one individual who said they were “losing the will to live”, with a senior employee stating they were “sick of taxpayers threatening suicide”. In documents filed to support his landmark whistleblower protection case, Boyle said he began to observe serious flaws in the culture of the ATO in the lead-up to his decision to speak out about the harm caused by aggressively pursuing debts from individuals and small businesses.
Australia
Parts of Australia’s east coast could be hit by ongoing flooding within days, just a week after the official declaration of a rare third La Niña.
Labor faces a roadblock when it comes to delivering an election promise on electric vehicles with the Greens and independent senator David Pocock raising concerns about hybrid cars being included in the government’s legislation.
Victorian MP Fiona Patten has revealed she has been diagnosed with cancer, after a tumour was recently discovered on her kidney.
New South Wales could erase its budget deficit twice over by following Queensland in implementing a tiered mining royalties scheme that taxes resources companies based on windfall profits, according to an expert analysis.
Pigs in Victoria are still being held in narrow pens that are not wide enough for the animals to turn around, despite an industry promise to stop using them five years ago, according to the Animal Justice party.
The world
Former US president Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted amid the investigation into his retention of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Despite Trump’s claiming days earlier that he couldn’t imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission that he could be, in a court filing on Monday proposing how to conduct an outside review of documents that were seized by the FBI in August.
The ranks of the global “ultra high net worth” individuals swelled by 46,000 last year to a record 218,200, as the world’s richest people benefited from “almost an explosion of wealth” during the recovery from the pandemic.
Twitter will question Elon Musk under oath in Delaware next week as part of the litigation in the billionaire’s bid to walk away from his $44bn deal for the social media company.
Iranian government officials have denounced a fourth day of protests after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody, claiming the demonstrators have fallen victim to a conspiracy by its enemies. Mahsa Amini died on Friday after she was arrested by the morality police for not wearing the hijab and her trousers correctly.
A spokesperson for Justin Trudeau has defended the Canadian prime minister over a leaked video that showed him singing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody in a London hotel lobby two days before Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
Recommended reads
5 Seconds of Summer are all still in their 20s, but have spent a decade touring and recording “in an endless loop”. Now they’ve swapped parties for feeling at peace.
In Three things, our weekly interview about objects, celebrity chef Guillaume Brahimi tells us about his contempt for dull blades – and the beloved knife he lost. “You can tell a lot about a person by their knives,” he tells Katie Cunningham.
Paul Verhoeven reflects on 50 years of the classic TV show M*A*S*H, a show he describes as “relevant, today, tomorrow and yesterday”. He adds: “I once thought it was a schlocky sitcom – after watching 11 seasons, I believe it is an early example of prestige television.”
Listen
A few weeks ago, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth got a call from a man asking to meet him urgently. In today’s Full Story, he tells Michael Safi how he hung up the call, jumped in a cab and hurried to the meeting place. There, he found an ex-paratrooper in the Russian army, Pavel Filatyev, who said he was ready to tell his story about his part in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Lance Franklin says he contemplated ending his AFL career at the conclusion of this season before deciding he had “unfinished business” with Sydney and signed a one-year contract extension.
Media roundup
The ABC has obtained footage filmed by Australian commandos in Afghanistan which raises fresh questions about the country’s special forces. And the Sydney Morning Herald has a gripping feature on the “chilling” impact of family violence on children.
Coming up
Cate Campbell will address the National Press Club.
And if you’ve read this far …
Researchers have taken the time to work out how many ants there are in the world.
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