KOREAN CRISIS ‘AT TIPPING POINT’

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile over the Japanese Island of Hokkaido, reigniting concerns about its weapons programs. The provocative test — just the third time North Korea has fired a missile over Japanese territory since 1998 — pushed the country’s only ally, China, to warn the crisis in the region was now at a tipping point.

While US President Donald Trump insisted all options remained on the table, Australia’s leaders, including Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, said they still believed North Korea was prepared to negotiate.

It’s not the only regional conflict on Bishop’s mind. The Foreign Minister has revealed that Australia offered Rodrigo Duterte‘s government in the Philippines direct assistance in fighting an Islamic State-backed insurgency. Bishop said Australian troops would not fight terrorists, but could instead “train, advise and assist,” comparing the potential role to that of Australian forces in Iraq.

DUTTON’S BOAT GLOAT DOESN’T FLOAT

In a scoop published in Fairfax papers today it has been revealed that a boat carrying seven foreign nationals landed on the Australian island of Saibai on August 20. The boat was carrying six Chinese passengers and one from Papua New Guinea. Two men have been charged with people smuggling offences in Queensland.

Saibai Island is just four kilometres from Papua New Guinea, and it remains unclear if the men aboard intended to claim asylum.

Yet the arrival appears to contradict the assurances of Peter Dutton, who said on Monday “we’ve not had a successful boat now in well over 1000 days”.

THEY REALLY SAID THAT

“This is not freedom of speech. This is freedom to hurt.” — Bill Shorten responds to the first television advertisement from the No campaign against marriage equality. The ad argues voting yes on same-sex marriage would lead parents to lose control of what their children learn in school.

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Shorten blames Turnbull for ‘total rubbish’ TV ad from same-sex marriage opponents

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Canberra: Professor George Williams will peer into the constitutional tea leaves at the National Press Club.

Sydney: PM Malcolm Turnbull will meet with the heads of energy companies. Turnbull will ask them to inform their customers of discount plans, in a bid to lower energy costs for households.

Sydney: Education Minister Simon Birmingham will address the higher education sector and tell universities they need to do more to help the government balance its books.

Sydney: Blogger Shane Francis Dowling will be sentenced for contempt of court after naming women alleged by Amber Harrison to have had affairs with Seven CEO Tim Worner.

Perth: Miner Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest will appear at media conference on future of Western Force rugby club. 

COMMENTARIAT

Abbott’s opposition to marriage equality will cost the Liberals for years to come — Jeff Sparrow (Guardian Australia): “Campbell thinks the coalition could be the beginning of that mythical beast, a rightwing alternative to GetUp. But there’s a big problem with that idea: namely, opposition to same-sex rights has become a fringe preoccupation.”

Korean missile crisis: bell tolls for our own missile defence — Greg Sheridan (The Australian $): “No one thinks Australia could deploy a big missile defence ­system any time soon. But where are we heading in five or 10 years time? To a North Korea with perhaps hundreds of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles and us with no ­capacity at all to provide any ­defence for any of our cities whatsoever?”

THE WORLD

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed his country will not remove any settlements from the West Bank. “We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle,” Netanyahu said, at a speech in the settlement town of Barkan. The fate of the approximately 500,000 Jewish settlers who moved into the West Bank after the 1967 war is one of the most central elements of conflict between Israel and Palestine. — Haaretz

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has weighed in on a dispute between the EU and Poland’s far-right government, which has been accused of attacking the independence of the judiciary. “We cannot simply hold our tongues and not say anything for the sake of peace and quiet,” Merkel said. — The Guardian

WHAT WE’RE READING

Who owns the internet? (The New Yorker): “Google itself doesn’t pirate music; it doesn’t have to. It’s selling the traffic — and, just as significant, the data about the traffic. Like the Koch brothers, Taplin observes, Google is “in the extraction industry.” Its business model is “to extract as much personal data from as many people in the world at the lowest possible price and to resell that data to as many companies as possible at the highest possible price.””

Marriage equality: Postal vote campaign fatigue and debating the inevitable (Archer): “To some extent, I’m always concerned that I’m a target when I leave the house looking exceptionally queer. But with the postal vote, not only have we become an even more pronounced target of hate, we’ve also become a hot topic of conversation. Debates around marriage equality are in the news every day, and our lives are the subject of dinner party chatter around the nation.”

Fox News pulled off the air in Britain (CNN): “The network has also become a lightning rod for critics seeking to spoil the Murdochs’ planned $15 billion takeover of Sky, the top pay TV provider in the U.K.”

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