Thursday, 29 October - Sweet like chocolate

Good morning, it’s Thursday, 29 October. In your Squiz Today…

• Inflation has risen more than expected, meaning another interest rate rise is on the cards

• Israel’s election is too tight to call

• And what a giant ball of eels is doing off the coast of Tassie…

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Andrew Williams, Larissa Huntington, Jonathan Liondis and Sophie Felice

Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said News24 (formerly Sky News) presenter Peta Credlin on Tuesday night, during an on-air barney with the network’s political editor, Andrew Clennell when he raised a topic with her before they were scheduled to talk about it. She runs a tight ship…

All eyes on the rise

The Squiz

Our headline inflation rate (aka how quickly stuff is getting more expensive) has risen more than expected - it’s now 4.3% for the year to September, up from 4% in August. And the trimmed mean, which is the underlying inflation rate that the Reserve Bank will look at when it makes its next interest rate decision on Tuesday, rose by 1% for the quarter - higher than the RBA’s forecast of 0.8%. That means a rate rise on Melbourne Cup Day has become an odds-on favourite…

What’s behind the rise?

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before - it’s housing. It rose by 5.2% for the year, which is largely based around higher costs for new buildings (and the materials to build them), as well as higher electricity prices. Fuel and transport added some heat as well, as did services (like visits to the vet, or the mechanic). This is all putting pressure on Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who put the ongoing inflation troubles down to the war in the Middle East. He downplayed the chance of another fuel excise discount to bring some relief, but did promise that December’s MYEFO (aka the mid-year budget update) would have some savings in it - though he didn’t say if those would outweigh new government spending. That’s been a constant criticism from the Coalition…

What does the Coalition think?

That the government is spending too much money and accumulating too much debt. It reckons Chalmers needs to cut more, with electric vehicle discounts and other climate programs mainly in its sights. As for the Reserve Bank, some of its key members were making a timely appearance at Senate estimates yesterday, and Governor Michele Bullock described inflation as “far too high”. That’s leading economists, markets and all 4 big banks to generally lean towards another rate rise on Tuesday next week. If it happens, it will be the fifth one this year and another addition to a base cash rate that’s already at its highest level in 15 years - which will put more pressure on Aussie mortgage holders. We’ll find out in 5 days…

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Squiz the Rest

Another deadly train crash in Spain

At least 68 people are dead and dozens more are injured after a high-speed train crashed into a second train that had stopped on the tracks in central Spain yesterday. The Spanish government says the crash was caused by a mistake from the rail network’s central command, and Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez said it was “unacceptable for a country like Spain to suffer 2 high-speed rail accidents in the same year”. Back in January, 46 people died when a train jumped the track and hit an oncoming train in southern Spain. The Spanish high-speed rail system is the world’s second-biggest (after China), but these crashes have shaken national confidence in its safety. Sánchez has called for increased safety measures and says he’ll declare 3 days of national mourning. 

A tight race in Israel’s election

It could be a while before Israelis have a result, with neither PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc nor former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition group on track for a majority. Reports this morning say Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party is slightly ahead with most of the votes counted and it’ll be the biggest in the 120-seat Knesset. His bloc has 53 seats - that’s well short of the 68 it held going in, and it needs at least 61 seats to form a majority coalition. In what’s been described as a pivotal election, voter turnout of 77.7% was the highest in 2 decades. The result could depend on the Arab parties, which are projected to win a record 19 seats. But forming a coalition with them won’t be simple for either bloc. Next up, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog will invite the leader with the best chance of success to form a coalition. And that process could take weeks.
*If you’re after more background to the Israeli election, we’ve got a Squiz Shortcut for you…

Star cops a hit…

…to the tune of a $260 million fine from the Federal Court. This is the case we spoke about yesterday, where the largest listed casino group in Oz was found to have repeatedly breached anti-money laundering laws. Star was hoping for a $100 million fine, AUSTRAC wanted $400 million, but Justice Cameron Moore landed in the Goldilocks zone - not too heavy, not too light - with $260 million. Now, Star’s lawyers had previously said that anything above $100 million might mean it would have to go into liquidation, but company chairman Soo Kim reckons things have changed since then - he said the fine “doesn’t draw us over the brink” and the group was “happy to get [the case] behind us.” 

A killer TV drama

A new limited series about the mushroom murder case is in the works, starring Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey (who you might know from The Last of Us and Yellowjackets), as triple murderer Erin Patterson. It’s called Mushroom Murders: There’s More to Unearth and it’ll premiere on Paramount+ next year. To recap, Patterson was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather, by serving them a lunch laced with deathcap mushrooms. She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Heather’s husband Ian, who survived. Patterson has appealed her convictions - in a timely twist, a decision on that is due tomorrow.

A r-eely good time

For decades, scientists have noticed that basketwork eels (named for the crosshatch pattern on their skin) gather for a large part of the year near a deep-sea mountain in the Huon Marine Park off the coast of Tasmania to spawn. The CSIRO has been studying them and they’ve found that around 2.8 million or 3,500 tonnes of the eels congregate there in a sort of giant ball. That’s a lot of action going on at what’s known as ‘Eel Hill’... The site’s real name is Patience Seamount and it used to be commercially fished for orange roughy - the eels are a bycatch and are listed as a threatened species. That’s now stopped, and scientists say the study has shed light on “one of the most remarkable fish aggregations documented in the deep ocean” - and shows how important it is to protect their habitat.

Apropos of Nothing

Check out this gallery of the World Chocolate Masters, in Antwerp, Belgium, where chocolatiers from around the world gather to show off their latest cocoa-creations. The only bad thing about this gallery is that we can only look at it…

The 2026 Australian Political Book of the Year is The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century, by Professor Paul Strangio. There’s your summer long-read sorted - the title alone will take a while…

And the skeleton of a newly identified dinosaur named Jodi has sold at auction for $67.2 million. The 3m tall (remnants of) Jodi were auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York. The perfect Christmas present - you’ll just need a big tree…

Squiz the Day

8.15am (AEDT) - Australian Investment Conference 2026 - Melbourne 

10.00am (AEDT) - JB Hi-Fi AGM - Melbourne 

10.00am (AEDT) - Woolworths AGM - Sydney 

10.00am (AEST) - Super Retail Group AGM - Brisbane 

EU-Canada Summit (until 30 October) - Montreal

ABS data release: international trade price indexes, September 2026; energy account, 2024-2025 financial year; deaths due to acute respiratory infections, September 2026

Blue Knot Day supporting survivors of complex trauma

Türkiye’s National Day

World Stroke Day

World Psoriasis Day

National Bandanna Day - to fundraise and raise awareness for teens with cancer 

🐱 National Cat Day

Birthdays for the voice of Homer Simpson Dan Castellaneta (1957) and actor Winona Ryder (1971)

Anniversary of:

• the first ballpoint pen going on sale in the US at Gimbels department store (1945)

• the first publication of the comic Asterix in French magazine Pilote, illustrated by Albert Uderzo (1959)

• 77yo John Glenn becoming the oldest person to go into space, on board the Space Shuttle Discovery (1998)

• China announcing the end of their one-child policy after 35 years (2015)

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