Tuesday, 7 January - Highway to the danger zone

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, 7 January. In your Squiz Today…

• The Albanese Government stumps up cash to fix up the Bruce Highway

• Canadian PM Justin Trudeau says he’s done

• And a really, really big tuna…

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Said tennis champ Novak Djokovic about coming back to Melbourne after his experience in 2022 when he was detained and then deported for not being vaccinated against COVID. Winning the trophy for an 11th time might help ease his trauma…

Some cash to spruce up the Bruce

The Squiz

Team Albanese has stumped up $7.2 billion in extra funding to fix the 1,673km Bruce Highway in Queensland, which goes all the way from Brisbane to Cairns and is one of Australia's most dangerous roads. It's PM Anthony Albanese’s first big promise in a swing he's making through the country this week - he'll head through the Northern Territory and Western Australia over the coming days in a tour many are taking as a sign an election campaign isn’t far away. 

$7.2 billion… How bad is this highway?

It’s pretty bad… Just this week, 2 people died in a crash there, and last year over 40 people died using the road. The Bruce Highway has more than triple the number of crashes that lead to fatal or serious injuries than any of the major highways in NSW and Victoria. Nearly half of the road has a 2-star safety rating (on a scale of 1-5), and the government says these upgrades will bring it up to 3 stars across the board. It's also an important road - playing a major role in moving people and freight around Queensland and crucial to the tourism industry. But any improvements might be some time away - RAC Queensland says the upgrades will take decades, and the Bruce actually needs constant funding to keep it at an acceptable standard.

Feels early for this sort of thing…

Analysts say it is unusual for a PM to be out and about talking to voters this early in the year. An election is due by 17 May and the PM’s sweep across Northern and Western Australia over the coming week while many are still emerging sleepily from a holiday stupor is being seen as another sign it will happen earlier than that. Albanese said it wasn’t an electoral move - he made the announcement from the safe Liberal electorate of Wide Bay - but political observers have noted that winning seats in Queensland - a state that just elected a Liberal National government - will be crucial to Labor’s chances when national voting gets underway. New Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the federal government putting up 80% of the cash was a win after it had floated a 50/50 federal/state split for infrastructure projects in 2023.

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Justin Trudeau calls it quits

After months of growing pressure, the Canadian PM said overnight “internal battles” means running for a fourth term isn’t going to happen. Canadian parliament will be prorogued (aka suspended) until 24 March to give Trudeau’s Liberal Party time to find a successor. Trudeau is the son of former PM Pierre, and he’s held the top job since 2015 when his party won a surprise majority. Thought of as the first PM of the Instagram age, he had strong support at first, but with low wages/high cost of living, his approval rating amongst Canadians has been steadily dropping. He’s also had internal party drama, with former Deputy PM/Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigning and criticising Trudeau last month. That means a tough road for the Liberals as they head to the next election, due by October this year.

It’s getting real cold up north

Parts of Oz have been sweating through heatwaves, but in the northern hemisphere, millions of people are shivering through a polar vortex weather event. To put it in simple terms, it’s when ultra-frosty Arctic air swirls across regions, bringing heavy snowfall and bitter cold. And although it makes for some striking photos, it can be extremely dangerous. In the US, more than 60 million residents in more than a dozen states are under emergency declarations, affecting thousands of flights, roads and schools. The wintry blast has already moved across Europe - and parts of the UK have recorded 40cm of snow and mass power outages. Some Brits are keeping calm and carrying on, though - in North Yorkshire, patrons snowed in at a local pub are happy as long as the food and drinks keep flowing…

When AI meets IVF…

The uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) has caused plenty of ethical conundrums in recent years, but Australian researchers say its introduction into the world of IVF raises particular concerns… They say AI is increasingly being used to help select which embryos are transferred to patients at fertility clinics - essentially choosing “who is brought into the world” (paywall). Monash University Professor Catherine Mills says that raises ethical questions about how algorithms are trained to make their choices and the risk of unintended bias with those choices. It’s not all bad, though - the tech’s aimed at improving embryo selection to increase the chances of successful pregnancies and reduce the time/cost of IVF. So a few pros and cons…

Crowe says Rabbitoh dough’s a no-go

Hollywood star Russell Crowe is in the headlines - not for his film work, but his ownership of the South Sydney Rabbitohs… Reports yesterday said he’s looking to sell his 25% share of the NRL team, which he nabbed for $3 million in 2006 and is now reportedly worth $15-20 million. The team has been in a slump - last year, they placed 16th, with their fewest wins in a season since the year Crowe invested. Crowe was not entertained by the speculation - shutting it down and calling it “desperate legacy media conspiracy theories”. And while we’re talking rugby (this time of the union variety), US Olympic star Ilona Maher has made her debut for the UK’s Bristol Bears. As “the most followed rugby player on the planet”, she’s already drawing record crowds…

Goose eggs for Aussies at the Globes

No luck for Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts or Guy Pearce as The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez dominated the film nods and Shōgun, Baby Reindeer and Hacks won big on the TV side. Host Nikki Glaser's work got much better reviews than last year's disastrous performance from Jo Koy - you can watch her monologue here (featuring Glaser calling Keith Urban a ‘kooky koala’...) Some other notable moments - Demi Moore won her first ever major acting award for The Substance and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Vin Diesel seemingly thawed out one of Hollywood’s biggest feuds. For a blitz of glitz, here’s a gallery of some of the red carpet looks - Challengers star Zendaya channelled her movie character by wearing 2 different dresses in one night, rather than picking just one of them…

Apropos of Nothing

If you thought your Christmas seafood bill ran high, we invite you to have a gander/gape at this huge bluefin tuna recently sold for more than $2 million in Tokyo… Said to be about the size of a motorbike, it was bought by sushi restaurateurs (of course). That’s a lot of sashimi…

More than 150 vintage Barbies have been stolen from a home in regional Victoria - with police on the prowl for answers. The dolls are worth about $15,000, but given they’re unique collectibles, they’ll be hard to sell without raising suspicions. Talk about Adventure Barbies…

Former UK PM Tony Blair was only halfway through his term in office when roadworks began on a notorious motorway in south Wales in 2002. The upgrades are finally complete, but some locals still aren’t impressed - one reckons “it's like the road from hell”. Womp womp…

Squiz the Day

11.00am (AEDT) - NSW Police and State Emergency Service are set to provide an update on the search for missing bushwalker Hadi Nazari in the Kosciuszko National Park

4.00pm (AEDT) - Australian Open: The Next Wave charity match between Jannik Sinner and Alexei Popyrin - Melbourne

4.15pm (AWST) - Men’s Cricket: Big Bash League - Perth Scorchers v Melbourne Renegades - Perth, broadcast live on 7Plus 

ABS Data Release - Building Approvals, November

Orthodox Christmas

Birthdays for designer Christian Louboutin (1963), actor Nicolas Cage (1964), rugby coach Ricky Stuart (1967), and champion F1 driver Lewis Hamilton (1985)

Anniversary of: 

• Guy Menzies completing the first solo trans-Tasman flight from Sydney to West Coast of New Zealand (1931)

• the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris where 12 people were killed by Muslim extremists (2015)

• the deaths of Edmund Barton, Australia’s first PM (1920), and author Elizabeth Wurtzel (2020)