Tuesday, 20 Oct - We've got each other and that's a lot

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, 20 October. In your Squiz Today…

• Federal Independent MP Helen Haines is in hospital after being attacked outside her electorate office in regional Victoria

• A UN aid agency is cutting Gaza support

• And the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos documentary makes waves in the US… 🎥

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

Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said the Instagram post announcing the cast for the upcoming stage version of The Castle, which features Justin Smith as Darryl and Christie Whelan Browne as Sal. Tell ‘em it’s a dream role…

A deliberate attack on an Aussie MP

The Squiz

Yesterday afternoon, federal independent MP Dr Helen Haines was critically injured when she was struck by a car near her electorate office in the Victorian city of Wangaratta. She’s currently being treated at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the attack on her appears to be deliberate, although authorities say it’s too early to speculate on a motive. It’s being described as one of the most serious attacks on a sitting MP in Australia since NSW state MP John Newman was shot dead outside his home in 1994.

What do we know?

Police say at around 3:35pm AEDT, a 43yo man driving a white Toyota Land Cruiser struck Dr Haines outside her electorate office, seriously injuring her lower body. She was taken to hospital in Wangaratta, and then airlifted to Melbourne for more treatment. Reports say a local barber detained the driver in a citizen’s arrest until police arrived and took him into custody. A joint counter-terrorism team - made up of the Australian Federal Police, intelligence agency ASIO and Victoria Police - is now investigating. Dr Haines’ family thanked the “swift assistance of bystanders and the dedicated health workers who assisted her, and police for their response.”

Tell me more about Dr Haines…

She’s a 65yo mother of 3 who grew up on a dairy farm and was a nurse and health researcher before she entered politics. She became the federal member for the Victorian electorate of Indi in 2019, taking over from previous independent MP Cathy McGowan, and she’s been a leading voice against corruption and an advocate for rural Aussies. The PM says he wasn’t aware of any threats made against Dr Haines before yesterday, but says there is “no place for political violence” in Oz. He’s previously warned that threats made against politicians are on the rise, though yesterday, the Australian Federal Police said it had received 1,067 reports of threatening/harassing behaviour against Aussie officials in the past financial year - a 12% jump on the year before. So as we wait for an update on Dr Haines’ condition and the investigation, heightened security for our pollies may be on the agenda.

Skip the trick-or-treat, take the treat

Squiz the Rest

Aid cuts in Gaza

A major supplier of aid to people living in the Gaza Strip said yesterday that it has had to make more cuts due to funding shortages. The World Food Programme (WFP), which is a United Nations agency, says the cuts will stop aid getting to about 500,000 people across the Strip. Reports say two-thirds of the 2.1 million people living there rely on aid to survive, but the WFP says it just doesn’t have the money to keep it up, after its funding for 2026 dropped by over half from the year before. It attributed the drop to “donor fatigue” and said the war in Iran was driving up operational costs at the same time - and it would need an extra $645 million in the next 6 months to maintain its operations.

4 Canadian soldiers have died in a grass fire

It happened at a military base in the province of Alberta, and injured at least 39 others. The fire started on Saturday local time, on remote land at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, which is one of the country’s busiest training facilities. It spread quickly towards soldiers taking part in exercises - but military officials thought it had been contained. Major General Wade Rutland told reporters that sudden high winds of up to 96km/hr caused the flames to jump 1km in 30 to 60 seconds - he said he’d “never seen anything like it” and it was “not normal” for fire to move like that. An investigation is underway, and this incident isn’t the only reason Alberta’s in the news - the province is voting on whether to consider seceding from Canada, with results expected late today.

A peptide for your thoughts

NSW Health is warning about unauthorised peptide use after 1,180 people turned up in the state’s emergency departments from July 2025 to September 2026. Peptides are chains of amino acids that give your body instructions on when to do things, and while they occur naturally in the body, they can be artificially produced. Unauthorised peptides, which haven’t been assessed or approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, are often sold online or via social media, marketed for weight loss or anti-ageing. Health authorities are seeing side effects like liver and kidney damage and severe vomiting, and warn that these unregulated products may have different or different amounts of the ingredients advertised, so consumers may not know what they’re getting. 
* Check out our Shortcut on peptides here

Raising the Mars bar

A Japanese mission to one of the moons of Mars is taking off this morning to try and bring a tiny piece of it back to Earth. If everything goes to plan, this will become the first time a sample has been returned from a Martian moon to be analysed in labs here on Earth, and scientists hope that this will help figure out how the Red Planet’s moons formed. The Japanese space agency is leading the robotic Martian Moons Exploration mission (MMX) to explore Phobos, the larger of the Red Planet’s 2 moons (which is over 150 times smaller than ours, BTW). The spacecraft will take a year to travel out to Phobos before landing, grabbing 10g worth of moon dust from the surface, tucking it away, and making the trip back to Earth, where it’s expected to land near Woomera in outback South Oz in 2031.

There’s no face like Holmes

A new doco is making waves in the US right now - but we’re going to have to wait another month to see it. You Can See Everything follows Elizabeth Holmes, who founded the biotech company Theranos. After making a big splash by saying it would revolutionise blood tests, Theranos’ claims were found to be bogus - and Holmes was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. This doco follows her in the weeks before she was jailed, and critics have gone nuts for it - it’s sitting at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences were also very keen to see it on its opening weekend, where it made $22 million - a large return for a non-concert documentary. But it’ll only premiere here on 12 November, so we can’t see everything - yet…

Apropos of Nothing

Bon Jovi is heading back Down Under for 2 concerts in Sydney and Melbourne in March next year. It’ll be the first time the band’s played in Oz since 2018, and if you’re livin’ on a prayer for tickets, they go live later today here.

The Academy Museum Gala was on over the weekend to raise money for film history preservation, and the stars did not mess around with their red carpet (or grey carpet in this instance) lewks. Dare we say Taylor Swift’s best fashun moment to date…  

And an update on the researchers checking out what they hoped to be remnants of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft in the Pacific - the object they’d spotted in photos was just a clump of washed up trees. That’s got to be a bummer…

Squiz the Day

8.30am (AEDT) - NSW Premier Chris Minns is expected make an announcement, along with several other state ministers - Lake Macquarie 

9.00am (AEDT) - Next round of public hearings in the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence begins (until 22 October) - Sydney, Melbourne 

9.30am (AEDT) - Brief status in Children's Court for the 3 Scots College teenagers charged with sexually assaulting a girl in an alleyway - Sydney 

9.30am (AEDT) - Advocates to launch anti-pokie machines campaign as part of wider gambling reforms - Sydney

9.50am (AEDT) - The RBA's Head of Payments Policy Ellis Connolly to speak at an Australian Finance Industry Association conference - Sydney

10.00am (AEDT) - Beacon Lighting Group AGM 

11.00am (AEDT) - 2026 Victorian Senior of the Year Awards, presented by the Victorian Governor Margaret Gardner - Melbourne 

11.00am (AEDT) - Bendigo and Adelaide Bank AGM - Bendigo

11.45am (AEDT) - Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Pacific Island Affairs Minister Pat Conroy to hold an interview ahead of the 32nd Papua New Guinea-Australia Ministerial Forum in Port Moresby. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong will also hold a press conference at 1pm (AEDT) - Port Moresby

5.30pm (AEDT) - The final New Zealand leaders' head-to-head election debate between New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins, ahead of the 7 November election

6.00pm (AEDT) - Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals Leaders' Summit begins (until 21 October) - Sydney 

7.15pm (AEDT) - Cricket: Second Women's T20 International Australia v New Zealand - Sydney, watch on Kayo

World Osteoporosis Day

International Chefs Day 🧑‍🍳

Birthdays for film composer Thomas Newman (1955), director Danny Boyle (1956), former US VP Kamala Harris (1964), and rapper Snoop Dogg (1971) 

Anniversary of:

• the publication of the third and final volume of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King (1955)

• the opening of the Sydney Opera House by Queen Elizabeth II (1973)

• Joko Widodo becoming President of Indonesia (2014)

• Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto being sworn in as President (2024)

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