Mark Latham's alleged behaviour condemned
It comes after media reports of inappropriate behaviour towards female MPs and an allegation he recorded a sex tape in his parliamentary office.
Mr Latham has denied any wrongdoing.
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ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
Illicit tobacco is 'out in the open' but what is the best way to deal with it?
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."
ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
Green iron didn't dominate headlines during Albanese's China trip, but it was a key discussion with Xi
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was trying to do a Bob Hawke with his trip to China last week. In 1984, Hawke became the second Australian prime minister to visit China, after Whitlam in 1973, and planted the seed that became the Australia-China iron ore joint venture. It resulted in the Channar iron mine in the Pilbara three years later. Liberal prime minister Sir Robert Menzies was actually called "Pig Iron Bob", but not because he went to China to drum up business. It was because in 1938 the wharfies at Port Kembla went on strike to stop the SS Dalfram loading pig iron destined for Japan, and which workers argued could be used to make weapons. Menzies, then attorney general, tried to stop the strike, arguing wharfies should not be running Australia's foreign policy. Perhaps today's prime minister wouldn't mind being known as "Green Pig Iron Ant" because he is trying to get Chinese funding for the crucial next phase of Australia's iron ore industry: green iron. Most of the past week's publicity blaze for Albanese's China trip was understandably about Australia's place in the contest between America and China, as well as some inevitable pandas, but an event last Monday was arguably the most important. It was a "Steel Decarbonisation Roundtable", with Australia's big four iron ore producers and all the big Chinese steel mills. The focus on green iron and steel decarbonisation on this China trip may have been influenced by Ross Garnaut, Hawke's economic adviser in 1984, and Rod Sims, former head of the ACCC. The think tank they started, called The Superpower Institute, produced a report in May called "A Green Iron Plan for Australia". The report tells the government how to build a green iron industry in Australia — that is, one that uses renewable energy and hydrogen rather than fossil fuels like coal or natural gas, and reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Garnaut and Sims point out that "most major economies have committed to achieving net-zero between 2045 and 2070. The timeline and trajectory of global decarbonisation may be uncertain, but the direction is clear: fossil fuel demand will contract in the coming decades." They say that if green iron replaces iron ore, it could generate "up to $386 billion a year" in export income for Australia, as well as providing a hedge against the decline of fossil fuel exports. To do it, tax credits worth $170 per tonne are needed to offset the "market failure" caused by the lack of an international carbon price. The core proposition of the Garnaut-Sims report is that Australia can be a renewable energy superpower, but it can't be traded in the way fossil fuels are — it needs to be converted into zero carbon products that are exported, and they focused on green iron because they think it should be first cab off the rank. The iron used to make steel is now made by removing the oxygen from iron ore, which is ferrous oxide (iron and oxygen). That's done by heating the ore with coal (carbon) in a blast furnace; the carbon binds with the oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which goes into the atmosphere, leaving behind pig iron. The pig iron is then smelted to get the carbon content down from about 4 per cent, which makes it brittle, to between 0.02 per cent and 2.1 per cent, which is steel. To make "green iron" out of iron ore, hydrogen is used instead of coal. It combines with the oxygen to form water. You can't use the same blast furnaces, so a process called direct reduction iron (DRI) must be used instead. DRI can use gases to remove the oxygen from the iron ore, but the temperatures aren't hot enough to remove the other impurities in iron ore, called gangue, so they have to augment the process with electric smelting. Bluescope, BHP, Rio Tinto, Mitsui, and Woodside are currently in a joint venture project called NeoSmelt, funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), to develop an electric smelting process that will remove the gangue. In the Future Made in Australia package in the 2024-25 Federal budget, the government introduced a Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive (HPTI) of $2 per kilogram — that is, hydrogen producers would get a tax credit of $2 for every kilogram of hydrogen they made. Each tonne of pig iron requires 55kg of hydrogen, so the HPTI would give a tax credit of $110 per tonne for the iron. The Garnaut-Sims team at The Superpower Institute has calculated that to create a green iron industry, the "subsidy" needs to be $170 per tonne. They say that figure represents the cost to the planet of the carbon dioxide released by the usual method of making iron with coal, and it's based on the European carbon price. Basically, it's a reverse carbon price — instead of taxing iron made with coal, you subsidise iron made with hydrogen. The way The Superpower Institute put it in the green iron paper published in May is that the lack of a carbon price is a market failure that disadvantages Australian iron producers: "This distorts the international market for iron products and creates an inefficient advantage for fossil-fuel-based products. "This market failure is a major reason that there is a cost gap between the international price of carbon-intensive iron products and the estimated production costs of Australian green iron. The cost gap for most producers is substantial." The 2024-25 budget provides $6.7 billion over 10 years for the Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive, which, at $110 per tonne, would do 6 million tonnes of iron ore a year. Last year, Australia exported 898 million tonnes of iron ore, of which 758 million went to China. If all of that was replaced by green iron that was given a tax credit worth $170 a tonne, it would cost more than $100 billion and completely blow up the government finances. Obviously, by estimating a cost of $6.7 billion, the government doesn't think there'll be much of a green iron industry in the first 10 years, which is probably true. This is a long-term project, but you have to start somewhere, and Albanese is starting in Shanghai with the Chinese steel mills. After the Steel Decarbonisation Roundtable, Albanese held a press conference alongside Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Metals, Geraldine Slattery of BHP Australia, Kellie Parker of Rio Tinto Australia, and Gerhard Veldsman of Gina Reinhart's Hancock Iron Ore. There was just one question about steel decarbonisation about halfway through the press conference before the journalists got back to the four Ts — Trump, tariffs, trade, and Taiwan. Someone asked the prime minister how much money his government was prepared to put into building a green iron industry in Australia. In reply, he waffled and didn't answer, for the obvious reason that the money budgeted for is an embarrassing fraction of what's going to be needed, and no more is available. Which is why he was in Shanghai trying to get the Chinese steel mills to pay for it. Alan Kohler is a finance presenter and columnist with ABC News and also writes for Intelligent Investor.
ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
Neurosurgeon Greg Malham accused of 'sexist' and 'unprofessional' behaviour by colleagues and patients
It started out as one of those odd stories you sometimes see in the rough and tumble of a federal election campaign — a viral video of a man tearing down a female politician's campaign corflute, talking about burying the body under concrete. The vision of a surgeon smashing Kooyong independent Monique Ryan's election sign into a rubbish skip and saying "always gotta bury the body" went viral in a week when multiple women were allegedly murdered by men. But for many of the former colleagues and others who spoke to Four Corners for our investigation into this man, the video was telling — not just about his attitudes about women, but also the position he occupied as a surgeon at the apex of the private hospital world. A surgeon who left behind uncomfortable nurses, crying radiographers, patients who thought him like an egotistical character out of Mad Men, and a devastated, grieving family. Greg Malham was a renowned neurosurgeon at Epworth ― Melbourne's largest private hospital. 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". Maddison, a former Epworth radiographer who also worked with Mr Malham, said he and other surgeons at the hospital had a "God complex". "They did see themselves as more important and better than anyone in the room," Maddison said. The phrase "God complex" was often volunteered to Four Corners about Mr Malham, whom many of his former colleagues thought was a prime example of the problem with some egotistical surgeons in the private hospital system. Former patient Annie Sargood and her husband Randall Cooke described Mr Malham as "probably the most egotistical person [they had] ever met". "[He was] absolutely, completely arrogant, like a character out of Mad Men," Ms Sargood, who had a spinal fusion operation with Mr Malham, told Four Corners. Mr Cooke said there were "flirtatious innuendos" in the way the surgeon behaved with his wife. "He was so up himself, he was so full of himself," Mr Cooke said. Four Corners has spoken to many staff who worked with him at Epworth and before that, at The Alfred public hospital, who felt uncomfortable about his behaviour. Recovery and theatre nurse Katie, who left Epworth in 2021, remembered often feeling uneasy around him because of the "inappropriate" way he would speak — this was something volunteered by many other nurses Four Corners spoke to. "He'd come into recovery and say, 'hey spunky'," Katie recalled. "[He] could be quite crass with some of the remarks he made, particularly around women. "He would make a lot of the nurses in recovery quite uncomfortable when he came in to hand over his patient." One memory that stood out for her was how, she said, he would "sometimes put his hand on your back and just leave it there that little bit too long". "There was sort of a vibe in the recovery room … 'Oh, here comes Greg. Let's get ready to feel awkward'," Katie said. She said that when she worked in Mr Malham's theatre, he would "really let loose in terms of his inappropriate behaviour". "Comments about women, about their tits ― just really crass, vulgar comments," she said. Maddison is a former Epworth radiographer who left the hospital largely because she could no longer bear working with surgeons in theatre. She said the neurosurgery department where Mr Malham worked was particularly toxic. "Radiographers would be crying because of the way that they'd been spoken to by the [neurosurgeons]," Maddison said. "A big reason for that stress was the stress that was put on us in theatre and just being scared every day." Two weeks before she left Epworth in January 2021, Maddison made a written complaint to human resources at the hospital about Greg Malham's behaviour in theatre. She said the radiography department was understaffed, and radiographers were often stretched so thin they would be late to theatre. On one of the occasions she was sent to Greg Malham's theatre, she said her heart sank because she assumed from previous experience he would get angry. She said he was "standing at the end of the corridor just glaring at me the whole journey up to the theatre". She wrote to HR that when she walked in, "Mr Malham … was yelling 'f***, f***, f***! This is f***ing ridiculous, having 12 people standing around doing nothing while we wait for an X-ray'." She wrote that Mr Malham then "aggressively un-scrubbed and stormed past me". "I felt uncomfortable, intimidated, scared, stressed and embarrassed," Maddison, who was worried she would make a mistake in the theatre, wrote. "I completed the imaging and left the theatre and burst into tears." Epworth's chief executive, Professor Andrew Stripp, who was not at the hospital at the time of these allegations, cannot speak about Greg Malham for legal reasons. But he does have a message for surgeons in his hospital more generally, saying they should be "mindful of the environment you are working in, be mindful of your team". "If people have felt uncomfortable about raising concerns or addressing issues, I'm very sorry to hear that," Professor Stripp told Four Corners. "It's essential that we create an environment at Epworth HealthCare where people can come to work, feel confident that they can deliver the care that they trained [for], that they aspired to do, and feel safe in doing so. "And when that's not living up to expectations, that they can take action, that they can be heard, and that those issues that are raised will be taken seriously, the concerns will be respected, and they will feel safe in doing so." The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) has strict guidelines for its fellows that go beyond their technical skills in the operating theatre. The College's Surgical Competence and Performance Framework says it is "poor behaviour" for surgeons to "repeatedly display a negative attitude towards junior medical staff, nurses and other health care professionals". It also says it is poor behaviour if a surgeon "berates and humiliates others" or "makes unwelcome comments on the appearance on the appearance of others". The College put out a statement condemning Mr Malham's behaviour in the corflute video after it received multiple complaints. RACS president, Professor Owen Ung, agreed with Four Corners that his behaviour in the video may also breach other competency guidelines, including those that said it was poor behaviour if a surgeon "lacks awareness that certain behaviours are disrespectful towards others" and "participates in or makes derogatory jokes." "We made it clear that we denounce any of that sort of behaviour," Professor Ung said. "Surgeons are held to high standards, as they should do in the community, and we take it very, very seriously. Neurosurgeon Ruth Mitchell, who worked at The Alfred with Greg Malham, preferred not to say what her thoughts were about him, but she did comment more generally about what she saw as a very sexist surgical culture in the field of neurosurgery. Of the roughly 300 neurosurgeons in Australia, only 16 per cent are women. "What I worry about is like a generation of female surgical trainees … who've had to do the emotional labour of tone policing or, you know, behaviour managing, managing up their seniors who really aren't behaving professionally," Dr Mitchell said. "The impact that has on the rest of your learning. You're meant to be learning how to operate. You're meant to be learning how to manage complex conditions." All of the 25 neurosurgeons at Epworth are men. When Andrew Stripp was asked if this was acceptable in 2025, his response was a very curt "No". "We'd like to see that improved," Professor Stripp said. "It is not OK," said Dr Mitchell. Yumiko Kadota is now a cosmetic physician, but she did several rounds of training in neurosurgery and left surgical training because of the toxic, male-dominated culture. She posted on Instagram about the corflute video being reminiscent of the "toxic dude-bro culture" she had witnessed in her training and was flooded with responses from "disgusted" women, including some who had worked with Greg Malham. "And the stories are sad, but not at all surprising to me just because I have seen similar behaviours in the past," Dr Kadota said. "It's a typical locker room chat where you can get away with saying misogynistic things to the other lads in the locker room and get away with it because there's no one holding you accountable. "And when you work in a male-dominated speciality like neurosurgery, there aren't that many people around who put you in your place." 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.
