More shark nets, drumlines, drones outlined in $88m government investment but legality of move questioned
But some are questioning if the move is even legal.
Over the next four years, the Queensland government will pour an additional $88.228 million into the Shark Control Management Plan 2025-2029.
It said the new plan "combines proven safety measures like shark nets and drumlines" with new tech including "drone surveillance and whale-deterrent measures", rolling out from July this year and to receive regular maintenance.
"The program includes increased servicing of shark control equipment to 365 days a year, weather permitting," Minister for Primary Industries Tony Perrett said on Sunday.
The minister said the investment was backed by science, however not-for-profit Sea Shepherd Australia described the move as "a dangerous escalation" of the program.
"Today's announcement is big and bold, it puts swimmer safety first," Mr Perrett said.
"I have said time and time again, the best science must inform our actions when it comes to [the Department of Agriculture and] Fisheries."
The investment follows two recent shark-related fatalities in Queensland, after school chaplain Luke Walford was killed while spearfishing at Humpy Island and 17-year-old surf life-saver Charlize Zmuda was injured while swimming at Bribie Island.
Mr Perrett said "striking the right balance between ensuring swimmer safety and maintaining a healthy marine environment" was vital to uphold the reputation of Queensland's $33 billion tourism industry "as a safe place to enjoy some of the best beaches in the world".
The new plan accepted recommendations made by an evaluation of the shark control program, which the government said had consulted marine experts.
"The report found it's likely shark control equipment, such as drumlines and nets, contributed to substantially lower shark attacks where it is operational," the minister's statement said.
More research will be undertaken as part of the plan, including how the control measures impact specific shark species.
However Sea Shepard Australia's Jonathan Clark said the new shark nets and drumlines would present dangers for "countless marine animals" and could also "increase risks to swimmers".
Mr Clark said the minister "is pushing a stone-age 'kill them all' approach that will devastate marine life".
The conservationist was alarmed by the new program, which he said "may breach federal law".
"Under Section 43B(3) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, any enlargement or intensification of the Queensland Shark Control Program could be deemed illegal," Mr Clark said.
When asked if Sea Shepherd Australia would be taking action legal against the Queensland government, he said "it's early days for us yet, but I certainly hope so".
He said two fatalities had occurred near drumlines in Queensland waters over the past five years, describing the equipment as attracting large sharks to shore and therefore increasing risk.
"These lethal methods don't protect people … Minister Perrett is ignoring the science, legal risks, and public safety, while intensifying a program that should have been phased out years ago," Mr Clark said.
"We can absolutely stand by our belief that those devices make beaches less safe — this view has been around for a long time and is supported by data and science.
"We need to have the shark nets removed, the drumlines ultimately have to go, and we have to get into the modern ideas of using that technology such as drones, shark barriers, and really good public education."
Mr Clark said drones and other new technology could be used to phase out older methods.
"We applaud the use of drones and any expansion in the use of drones because they do make beaches safer," he said.
The information provided by drones could help make informed decisions when it comes to entering the water, according to Mr Clark.
"But in effect, it means nothing while the government continues with shark nets and drumlines, and the whole point of developing the non-lethal technologies is to get rid of these antiquated shark culling devices," he said.
Potential locations for the expanded program have been identified based on the presence of Surf Life Saving Queensland, and data indicating a growth in beach use.
The Queensland government has identified seven possible beaches for traditional shark control measures, including:
For the expanded drone program over 2025-2026, six potential locations have been earmarked:
The beaches will now undergo further detailed assessment from "stakeholders and expert scientists", as well as community consultation.
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Neurosurgeon Greg Malham accused of 'sexist' and 'unprofessional' behaviour by colleagues and patients
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When the corflute story broke in Melbourne's The Age newspaper, Epworth's CEO, Andrew Stripp, issued an unusually robust statement to staff, saying the hospital was "deeply concerned by the unacceptable behaviour displayed by the surgeon" and he personally found the content of the video "abhorrent". Within weeks, Greg Malham resigned from the hospital. Mr Malham was encouraged to report himself to the medical regulator, AHPRA, which commenced an investigation, but he is still operating. An investigation by Four Corners has discovered a string of people from Mr Malham's past who were not shocked by the video because they had seen what they described as sexist and inappropriate behaviour in the workplace by the neurosurgeon. "I wasn't surprised, because that's how exactly how he would carry on in theatre," said Katie, a former Epworth nurse who worked with Mr Malham in theatre and in the hospital's recovery rooms, who told Four Corners she found his behaviour with women "uncomfortable". 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Warning: The following sections contain references to suicide. There was an incident that current and former Epworth staff repeatedly raised in relation to Dr Malham: his relationship with a 34-year-old nurse at the hospital who suicided in September 2014. The nurse's name was Laura Heffernan, and in her suicide note, she blamed Mr Malham for her decision to take her life. The note formed part of a coronial brief that has not been made public until now — the entire brief was released to Four Corners because the Victorian State Coroner accepted it was in the public interest. Apologising to her parents, Laura wrote in the note that she loved Greg with all her heart and could not "believe it was all lies and fake". Laura had been contacted by Mr Malham's ex-wife to say that he had been sleeping with both of them and lying to them. "I feel disgusting & used & humiliated & ashamed," Laura wrote. "I don't think the pain of how someone could be so hurtful & f***ed up & totally made me think they loved me & wanted a life with me will ever go away. It just hurts so much." Laura was very popular at the hospital, and Epworth nurses who worked with her felt uncomfortable about the power dynamic between the star neurosurgeon and the much younger nurse. Some told Four Corners that Mr Malham was inappropriately persistent in his attentions. "We found out that Laura was with Greg, and honestly, it was a little bit of a shock given his reputation," Katie said. "She was quiet, you know, quite dainty and just a nice sort of girl. And he was this outspoken, powerful, sort of obnoxious man." Katie remembered how, before they started dating, he would check the roster to see what time Laura was starting and finishing and leave chocolates for her, which none of the other surgeons would do. Another former Epworth nurse, Ruth, who was close friends with Laura and was a key coronial witness because she was one of the last people at the hospital to speak to her alive, said that in the early stages, Laura found Mr Malham's attentions "quite claustrophobic". "She was really professional and really good at what she did, and I think she probably felt that that, at times, was a bit intense," said Ruth, who left the hospital in 2015. "I think a lot of us were thinking, 'why is she with him?'" Katie remembered. Ruth, Katie and the other nurses noticed a sudden change in Laura after the relationship with the powerful neurosurgeon abruptly ended — Ruth remembers hugging her and recoiling because she was so thin. "And following that time, she just became really depressed," Katie said. "She'd lost a lot of weight. She pretty much looked as if she'd lost the will to live." The coronial brief shows Laura discovered Greg Malham cheated on her with the second of his now four wives and lied to both of them for months. She sent her girlfriends a distressed email: "I wanted you girls to know how f***ed up Greg is … I spoke to his ex-wife today … She knew that we were both being totally duped. Greg's told me lie after lie and is unable to give the truth when face to face … She thinks he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder … I'm so ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated … He is such a bad person. How can you think you can know someone when they can be that evil?" A supportive doctor offered to accompany Laura to complain to Epworth management about Greg Malham, but Laura told the doctor words to the effect of "no, he's too powerful". In September 2014, eight months after she started dating Greg Malham, Laura pulled up next to a park near her home in Thornbury in Melbourne's inner north and killed herself. "The last text she sent to me was just hugs and kisses," a tearful Ruth said. "As time went on, I was just angry, I suppose, that he could treat someone as lovely as Laura the way he treated her." Laura's mother, Christine Heffernan, said she did not understand why her daughter loved Greg Malham so much, but that Laura had blamed her decision to kill herself on him. "So, to me, to this day, it's just a waste of a beautiful life," Ms Heffernan said. Greg Malham never contacted the Heffernan family after Laura's death. He never responded to investigating police, despite repeated requests and the fact that he was not under suspicion. "People were angry, really angry at him," Ruth said. Katie was one of the nurses who refused to work with Greg Malham after Laura's death, and she remembered how one nurse left Epworth because of it. "One of the nurses sort of spoke up for Laura, and there were some interviews with her, with management, and soon after, she had left," Katie said. "Her concerns were Laura's mental health was deteriorating as a result of being with Greg, and she felt like there were some people that needed to be more accountable for that. There should have been a bit more of an intervention before she died. Many people told Four Corners that these types of surgeons brought in so much money for hospitals that management was loath to intervene when there were red flags about their behaviour. "They're the top of the food chain," said Ruth. "They are seen as almost untouchable. "I think in that culture, it's expected that you are going to get treated not well at times — you know, yelled at, you know, spoken down to." Professor Stripp can't address Greg Malham's treatment of Laura for legal reasons, but he had a personal message to any man in a position of power at the hospital who behaves inappropriately. "I think it important to understand such behaviour is unacceptable at Epworth Healthcare and will become known and we will address it," Professor Stripp said, agreeing that this meant "zero tolerance". The staff who worked with Greg Malham over many years are speaking out because they say change is desperately needed. "The system's so broken," Maddison said. Greg Malham did not respond to any of Four Corners' detailed questions, but in a preliminary call, he said the corflute video was intended as a joke amongst a small group of friends and that his fondness for mobster movies had been misinterpreted. Mr Malham pointed to his long and successful career at Epworth. Despite the scandal following the corflute video and his departure from Epworth, Mr Malham is now operating at Melbourne's Warringal Private Hospital, whose code of conduct says it has zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour. Warringal's owner, Ramsay Health Care, said in a statement to Four Corners that Greg Malham has "temporary credentialling" and his application for full credentialling was "currently progressing". It said all practitioners seeking to work there must agree to uphold its code of conduct and values. Watch Four Corners' full investigation, God Complex, tonight from 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
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Jon Jon Jensen says tobacconists selling black market cigarettes are easy to find. The 58-year-old from country Victoria has been smoking for about 45 years and turned to under-the-counter cigarettes six years ago. "I just found they are so readily available, I can get them almost anywhere," says. He is one of the many Australians buying illicit tobacco — a trade that has been expanding over recent years. In 2023, it was estimated that illegal tobacco consumption may account for close to 30 per cent of the total tobacco market in Australia, although these estimates by the legal tobacco industry are disputed. And despite sectors of government agreeing Australia has a problem with the illegal trade, there's mixed messaging about how to tackle the problem. Unlike a pack of legal cigarettes, which costs about $40 for 20, Mr Jensen buys a box of 100 cigarettes once a week, which he says costs him $30. "Everyone I know who smokes is buying illicit tobacco, because of the price," he says. The difference in price between the products is because of the tax excise that is added to legal cigarettes, which can be up to 70 per cent of the total retail price. University of Sydney public health professor Becky Freeman says, despite having some of the lowest smoking rates our country has seen, we are seeing illegal tobacconists "popping up everywhere" because "cigarettes are so incredibly profitable". The current revenue for the government from tobacco excise sits at about $7.4 billion — a drop from $12.6 billion in 2022-2023 and $16.3 billion in 2019-2020. During a press conference last month, federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said there were two reasons for the decline. "The good reason is fewer people smoking, the bad reason is we know that we've got a challenge when it comes to illegal tobacco," he says. While he has ruled out lowering the tax excise on cigarettes, which will rise again in September, NSW Premier Chris Minns has a different view. "[The cost is] pushing regular law-abiding citizens into an illicit black market, where they are forced to buy cigarettes for $20 or $17, compared to $60 or $80," he said during Parliament in June. He also argued the government did not have enough resources to crack down on the illicit trade as it currently stands. "At the end of the day, we have to make a decision about what the best use of police resources are or health resources are," he said. Professor Freeman worries if the government was to lower the tobacco excise, it would be sending the wrong message. "The only thing you would be doing is rewarding the very retailers who had flouted the law by allowing them to legally sell cheap cigarettes," she says. She argues that, if the government was to lower the tax excise, it would essentially have to remove it altogether to "compete with the illicit market". "My concern with getting rid of the tobacco tax essentially is we would make smoking more appealing to more people and we'd be undermining all the public health gains we have made," she says. There are more effective ways Ms Freeman says the government can use to target the illegal trade. "If we really want to tackle the illicit market, to me it's about managing the supply of products … cigarettes are sold everywhere in any kind of retailer you can imagine. "If you want to be able to enforce illicit tobacco, the number one thing you should be doing is reducing the number of outlets that sell it." But Fei Gao from the University of Sydney Business School believes that while a range of steps are necessary to tackle the black market, one of them is lowering the excise. "When something is so expensive from the legal market, the illicit market will grow," Dr Gao says. She says lowering the excise is an "important step because if that gap can't be closed, any effort the government takes or makes will be wasted". But she says determining the amount will require collaboration. "During all these years, we haven't done any policy review on tobacco excise, so I think we need to gather a bunch of experts, such as tax experts [and] economists," she says. "We need to sit together, talk about this topic and we need to price in all relevant factors such as the growing illicit tobacco market, the replacements such as vapes [and] the ever-changing smoking rate." This month, NSW and Victoria were the last two states to introduce tobacco licensing laws, which mean businesses in NSW have until the start of October to apply for a licence that allows them to sell cigarettes. For Victoria, it's February next year. But Professor Freeman says legislation has to go further. "Immediately shut down shops that you find selling, to issue massive fines not only to the business owner but to the landlord who owns that property and leases out that building," she says. "And then finally you should be using this licensing scheme to reduce the number of outlets." Mr Jensen says he went from smoking up to 90 cigarettes a day, down to less than 20. He wants to quit, but says the nicotine replacements are "too expensive". "I just wish the excise they do collect on cigarettes would be subsidising nicotine replacement therapy because this nicotine replacement therapy is expensive. "I don't particularly want to give up nicotine, I'd love to give up the cigarettes, but I can't afford the nicotine replacement therapy that goes with it." Mr Jensen says a box of 20 inhalers costs about $40. He says his cheapest option is turning to the black market. Federal Health Minister Mark Butler didn't answer questions from the ABC about whether he'd consider subsidising the cost of nicotine replacement therapy. The Albanese government introduced the Illicit Tobacco and E-Cigarette Commissioner (ITEC) role on July 1, 2024 to "coordinate national efforts to combat the threat of illicit tobacco and e-cigarettes to the Australian community". In a statement to the ABC, the ITEC said: 'Criminal networks don't stop at borders, and neither should the response. The ITEC continues to work with all levels of government to coordinate national policies, and support enforcement efforts across jurisdictions to drive these illicit actors out of business." As for Mr Jensen, he says he'll continue to smoke illicit tobacco until the price of inhalers drops. "If they're serious about getting us to quit smoking, make quit-smoking products cheaper."
