Wednesday, 4 February - We're goin' up, up, up

February 04, 2026

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, 4 February. In your Squiz Today…

  • Steps are being taken to patch up the Coalition

  • Bill and Hillary Clinton agree to testify about Epstein

  • And a Minion-related misstep…

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Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

That’s what 13yo Austin Appelbee said he was thinking while swimming 4 kilometres to get help for his mother and 2 siblings after the family was stranded at sea off Quindalup in the south-west of WA. The key to a heroic swim: channel Dory from Finding Nemo…

Truce or dare…

The Squiz

Nationals leader David Littleproud says he’s going to take some time to consider reforming the Coalition, after Liberal leader Sussan Ley offered him an olive branch yesterday… Ley says she's open to another reconciliation if 3 Nats who resigned from the frontbench after not voting with their Coalition colleagues on hate speech laws stay there for 6 months. Ley has given him a deadline of Monday to make a call, and The Australian reports that Littleproud is now rustling up a counter proposal (paywall). But reaching a truce won’t be easy - with one Nats MP, Llew O’Brien, saying he’ll quit the party if the Coalition reforms without sorting out their differences on the hate speech laws first. It’s a tricky one… 

So parliament looked a bit different, then… 

Sure did - as we mentioned on Monday, the crossbench (aka MPs who don’t represent the government or official opposition) is now the same size as the Liberal opposition. The government says it’s the first time since the 1930s that’s happened, and it has changed Question Time so questions are evenly split between the Libs and the crossbench. It means both the Libs and Nats will get less chances to hold the government to account… Things also looked a bit different in the Senate yesterday, with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson still suspended after wearing a burqa in there late last year. She was in Adelaide unveiling ex-Liberal Cory Bernardi as a One Nation candidate in the upcoming South Oz election - and dealing with questions over her failure to declare flights on Gina Rinehart’s private jet… 

Anything else?

While things might look different, the issues won’t be... Cost of living will be front and centre for discussion after the Reserve Bank raised interest rates yesterday for the first time in over 2 years from 3.6% to 3.85%. The bank said that "inflationary pressures picked up materially" in the back half of last year, and Governor Michele Bullock stressed that our productivity is still a big problem. Over to you, Treasurer… Jim Chalmers (who got plenty of questions about this during QT) conceded that people are battling at the moment, but continued to reject the Liberal Party's claims that government spending was the issue. Our big banks have begun announcing rate rises following the RBA’s move, so if you’d like to check how the hike might affect you, here’s a handy calculator…

Add this to the summer checklist

Sunscreen and hats are sorted, but kids' sunnies often fall off the radar. Experts reckon up to 80% of lifetime UV eye damage happens before 18yo, and you can't see or feel those UV rays doing their damage - including on cloudy days. Babiators have 100% UV protection and polarised lenses, plus frames that survive real life - being sat on, dropped, twisted, you name it. Worth a look if you're checking off the summer prep list...

Squiz the Rest

Making minerals moves

US President Donald Trump is planning to invest $17.2 billion in a critical minerals stockpile to rival the size of China’s - a nation that currently has the market well and truly cornered. Critical minerals - and specifically a subset of them, rare earths - are used in high-tech items like electric vehicles, computer parts, smartphones, and also weapons. So demand is growing fast, and given US-China tensions, Trump says the so-called Project Vault stockpile is about reducing reliance on other nations and making sure “American businesses and workers are never harmed by any shortages”. Bringing it home, this comes months after Trump and our PM signed a new US-Oz deal on investments in critical minerals projects Down Under, putting us in pole position to benefit from the US plan…
*We’ve dug into the US-Oz critical minerals deal in our Shortcut if you’d like to know more about it…

Gearing up for a high-profile hearing…

Less than a week after the latest batch of Epstein files was released, Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before the US Congressional investigation into the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The date hasn’t been set yet, but the former President and Secretary of State didn’t have a lot of choice… The Oversight Committee in the Republican-led House of Representatives has been pushing for the Democratic pair to be held in contempt after initially refusing to testify in person about their relationship with Epstein. House Speaker Mike Johnson says it’s a “good development”, but said lawyers are still “looking into the details” of the contempt charges. As for the Clintons, they’ve accused Republicans of playing “partisan politics” to distract from President Trump’s ties to Epstein…

Beware of deepfakes…

…is one of the takeaways from the 2026 International AI Safety Report. FYI - it’s an annual review of AI systems’ capabilities and risks overseen by Canadian computer scientist/global AI expert Yoshua Bengio, who says there are “daunting challenges” we need to confront. This is a good summary… It’s found that AI-generated deepfake content - particularly deepfake pornography - is of “particular concern”, and is quickly becoming increasingly hard to spot. Then there’s the uptick in using chatbots as companions, with the report citing evidence that some people are developing “pathological” emotional dependence on the tools. As for impact on jobs, the report says it’s still uncertain - but if the capability of AI agents improves, it "would likely accelerate labour market disruption"...
*Improving media literacy is our thing, so if you have a young person in your life, they might like Newshounds, a free resource from our friends at Squiz Kids.

A giant act of charity

Generous folks from around the world (including Australia) have chipped in to protect the Cerne giant - a famous UK landmark. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a 55-metre image of a naked man sculpted into the chalk hillside in the county of Dorset - you can see it here, though maybe be a bit careful about opening that link on the bus… To this day, no one’s quite sure why it’s there or when it was made. A few months back, UK conservation organisation the National Trust launched a fundraiser to help with its purchase of the land around the figure to protect it for future generations, and this week the Trust confirmed that it’s hit its target. It’ll use the purchase to protect local wildlife and to enable more research into when, why and how it came to be. So maybe one of the world’s more enduring archaeological mysteries might be solved…    

A Despicable dilemma

Days out from the 2026 Winter Olympics starting is a less-than-stellar time for Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté to be told to change his routine… It's not a skill-related issue; instead, he's slid into a copyright hiccup over his Minions-themed music. Yep, the yellow overall-wearing animated creatures… Guarino Sabaté submitted the music for rights clearance months ago and has already been competing with the routine (theme costume included…) in the current season. But he's now been told 'no bueno' for the Olympics, and says he'll face the challenge of reworking his program "head-on". Experts say this has been happening more often as skaters increasingly look to contemporary music for their routines and get tangled in red tape over the rights. It's ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-nanas…

Apropos of Nothing - Showbiz edition

Singer and former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson is quitting her US talk show after 7 years. Clarkson says it's to spend more time with her kids after their father died last year, but her time as host gave us this classic moment with Anne Hathaway - and some banger covers… 

Rom-com queen Nancy Meyers (The Holiday, It’s Complicated) is making her first film in 11 years. The queen of cashmere classics has Penelope Cruz and Jude Law on board for her new movie - it doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s coming out around Christmas next year… 

And we have another Meryl Streep update: The actress is set to play singer Joni Mitchell in a new biopic directed by Cameron Crowe. He brought us that other rock 'n roll classic Almost Famous, so we'll be hailing a Big Yellow Taxi to the cinema when it comes out…

Squiz the Day

10.30am (AEDT) - A state funeral for Dame Marie Bashir, NSW's 35th Governor, is being held - Sydney, the event will be available to stream on YouTube

11.30am (AEDT): Former Liberal Defence Minister Christopher Pyne will address the National Press Club on insights from the 2025 State of the Older Nation report - Canberra 

Peace talks are due to resume between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators. It comes a day after Russia launched a huge drone attack on Ukraine overnight, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heating in freezing temperatures - Abu Dhabi

The New START treaty which constrains US and Russian nuclear weapons is set to expire. You can read more about what that might mean here…  

Today marks 2 years since the disappearance of Samantha Murphy while out on a morning run in Ballarat

ABS data release - Barriers and incentives to labour force participation, September; selected living cost indexes, December

International Day of Human Fraternity

International Girls and Women in Sports Day

A birthday for Facebook (2004)

Anniversary of:

  • the first US electoral college choosing George Washington as President and John Adams as Vice-President (1789)

  • Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) declaring independence from the UK (1948)

  • the release of Fleetwood Mac's 11th studio album Rumours (1977)

  • the deaths of Liberace (1987) and Betty Friedan (2006)

  • the birthday of Rosa Parks (1913)