Your AM Headlines + Why We'll Be Seeing More Sharks This Summer

0:00This is Ashley Akinetti from the Almost Hymnest Podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort day passes, start at just $1,500. Once you post your daycation, people are gonna ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash almost famous, and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous.

1:00You're listening to a Mamma mia podcast. Hi, I'm Tamzen Rose with the latest from the Quickie Newsroom. We're a beach loving nation. Swimming is a source of national pride. And what's better than jumping in the sea on a hot summer's day? But after a number of devastating and frankly terrifying shark attacks over the past 12 months, many people are now thinking twice. The New South Wales government thinks eyes in the sky could be the answer. Today, we're asking if drones make us safer and why the beach will look and sound different this year. But first, hear your headlines for Friday, September 11. A new poll suggests most Australians don't think the federal government's response to a string of recent gender-based violence stories has been good enough. The survey from the Women and Girls Emergency Center

2:02comes after allegations against Sydney Swans players and Scott's college students and new research on sexism among young boys made headlines in recent weeks. Just 27% of the 1,08 adult surveyed said the government's response had been adequate. 42% called it inadequate. It follows an earlier poll from July which found 62% of Australians believe not enough is being done to prevent domestic and family violence before it happens. And 55% want prevention efforts sped up immediately. The Women and Girls Emergency Center say Australians want to see sustained investment in prevention and frontline services, not just a response after the fact. The organization's seventh annual walk against gender-based violence will happen in Sydney Centennial Park this Sunday with 3,000 people expected to attend. The federal government has softened a plan designed to keep more Australian gas at home and ease power bills.

3:03Under the revised scheme, gas suppliers will only need to offer up one-fifth of their exports to the domestic market, which is down from the number originally proposed in May with no floor being enforced. The scheme's start date has also been pushed back a year to July 2028. Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the change would still put downward pressure on bills for the roughly 5.1 million homes and businesses running on gas, but wouldn't be drawn on exactly what difference it would make saying the policy was about supply, not price. For households, the practical question is simple. Less gas reserved for local use generally means less competition to bring prices down. Mr Bowen denied the charges amounted to a back down. Australians are buying electric cars faster than the country can build places to charge them. Earlier this month, figures showed electric vehicles outsold petrol models for the first time ever with more than 27,000 EVs bought in August alone,

4:03a rise of 171% on the year before. Now, a new report has found the charging network hasn't kept pace with 24 electric vehicles for every public charger, a ratio described as considerably higher than expected for a maturing market. A report into the Australian market released on Thursday found that charging remains heavily concentrated in cities. 60% of all charges are in New South Wales and Victoria while Western Australia and Tasmania have the least. And toxic forever chemicals have turned up in Australian rainwater for the first time, but researchers say there's no cause for alarm. RMIT and EPA Victoria researchers found eight PFAS compounds in Melbourne rainwater samples collected between 2024 and 2025. Analytical chemist Oliver Jones said all the concentrations were well below drinking water safety guidelines with no real risk to health. The findings also suggest PFAS can travel through the atmosphere,

5:04attached to dust and water droplets and fall back to earth in rain, explaining why it turns up in even remote areas. PFAS are a large group of man-made chemicals used in things like non-stick cookware, food packaging and firefighting foam. Professor Jones noted forever chemicals is a slightly misleading name since they do break down eventually just very slowly. If you want to know why Australia is falling behind on regulating these chemicals, Charlotte Mottlock unpacked it on yesterday's episode of the quickie and the links in our show notes. Coming up, some good news if you're nervous about AI coming for your kids job. And why our beaches are gonna look different this summer. This is Ashley Akinati from the Almost Amos podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts,

6:06pools and spas and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes, start at just $1,500. Once you post your daycation, people are gonna ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash Almost Famous, and use the promo code Almost Famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code Almost Famous at ResortPass.com, slash Almost Famous. And some good tech news out today. Turns out AI might create more entry level jobs for young Australians, not fewer. New analysis from Seek shows generative AI is more likely to assist junior workers than replace them in several white collar fields,

7:08including electronics engineering, marketing, advertising, and construction management. Seek Chief Economist Blair Chapman said, while some roles will see AI take over tasks, in others it is helping workers do their jobs more effectively, increasing demand for junior staff. Electronics engineering stood out with a three percentage point rise in early career job ads. Software programming saw a small decline, one of the few roles where AI is automating more than assisting. Dr Chapman said it doesn't guarantee more jobs overall, since AI could still mean employers need fewer staff in total. But for now, it looks like generative AI could boost demand for early career workers rather than cutting it. And finally, if Prince Harry needed further proof, he is well and truly out of the royal fold, you gander just delivered it. The country has withdrawn from next year's Invictus Games, the event that Harry founded in 2014 for wounded and sick military personnel, with Uganda's defense chief saying he didn't want to be seen

8:08crossing King Charles, who he deeply reveres. The timing isn't great. It comes just days after the king confirmed in black and white that Harry and Meghan won't be resuming royal duties and only weeks after the couple moved back to the UK after six years in California. Sophie Gossage surfs Bondi most mornings. And a few weeks ago, she was out with a friend and he told her he was pretty sure he'd seen a shark swim under them in the waves. I actually thought he was taking the piss because normally he's a bit of a joker. We've been surfing the day before and he'd kind of seen something that looks shark-like we figured out as a boy. So I kind of called his bluff. But he wasn't joking. Within a few seconds, the beach alarm went off. Everyone paddled in. They'd noticed a drone was above them as this was all happening. So when they got to shore, they asked the operator to see the footage. When I got in and watched the footage back, you could see that the shark had gone underneath myself and my friend and then it had actually doubled back

9:11and I paddled straight over it to get back in. And even though I was consciously looking, I couldn't see it, which I think is also kind of scary because it makes you think, you know, how often are you kind of paddling over these things about where I tend to find them or seeing them. That's a scene that's becoming more and more familiar to surfers and swimmers at our beaches. Drones are patrolling overhead and then sirens are going off and everyone's hauling themselves back to the sand. This summer in Sydney, authorities expect to see more sharks and they expect more beach closures. Not necessarily because there are more sharks about, but because we're looking harder for them than we ever have. We're expecting more sharks being spotted, which will result in more beach closures. What we're working on is trying to use technology, AI for instance, to enhance that information to make sure that we're making the right decision. Like it's a big difference between spotting a three-meter white shark compared to say

10:11a one-meter-wobby-gon. That's Thor Saunders. He's the executive director for research and evaluation at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, overseeing shark management in New South Wales. He's very aware that at this stage, some of the tech can't tell the difference between a potentially risky sighting and a shark that's just swimming along without an interest in humans. In the case he mentioned, the sharks are very different in terms of their risk profiles. But yet, that might not be able to be identified depending on the angle the operator's looking at, the footage and whatnot. So yeah, we really want to try to develop some common risk systems to about make sure that seeing more sharks doesn't necessarily mean significant, even more beach closures. His team and surf lifesaving New South Wales got a major state funding uplift this year after a string of shocking shark attacks. In September last year,

11:11experienced surf and mercury salarcus was bitten by a great white shark at Long Reef Beach and later died. In January this year, a 12 year old boy, Nicholas Antik, was fatally bitten by a bull shark at shark beach in Valkluse, inside Sydney Harbour. And then in June, Kudgy Local Leia Stewart lost an arm after being bitten by a white shark while swimming between the flags at Kudgy. So from now, if you're going to the beach, chances are you're going to see a drone. The coverage we've got now, I think we've got 73 drones across 97 beaches and 72 of those beaches have got 365 day coverage. You know, this time last year, we were doing more sort of restricted hours, whereas now we're doing from dawn to last. So massively increased the amount of surveillance there. And we underpin this research program. We've found that drones are effective at spotting sharks. An AI has a role to play here too.

12:12Trying to tell the difference between a swimmer, a surfer, a dolphin and a shark, a distinction the human eye doesn't always catch. With our first AI trials, it was interesting. We gave the people that developed the algorithm, a whole lot of footage and said, I, we've spot sharks in this bit of the footage. If you can ignore the rest, turns out there was a few sharks in the rest of the footage. So that's because, you know, AI can see things, detect things with pixels and movements and stuff like that. But potentially the human eye might not easily pick up. We've got those trials. This summer on that, and we're hoping to really enhance that part of the system by sort of next year. But Saunders is upfront that spotting a shark and predicting an attack are two very different things. And just because we're spotting them, doesn't mean every shark is a risk. He says it's something that will get better, but that it'll take time, which is one of Professor Rob Brander's concerns. He heads up the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group.

13:13And he's always thinking about how to make beaches safe and accessible for everyone. There's going to be this perception now, because every time a drone sees a shark, presumably there's going to be beach closures, or we're going to have a hot summer, probably. If you've got a lot of beaches being closed all the time, and are people going to get annoyed with that? Are they going to stop coming to the beach? Are they going to seek out beaches that don't have drones, which means they're probably don't have lifeguards and are unpatrolled? He rightly points out that many, many more people die from drownings at our beaches every year than from shark incidents. Our beaches are wonderful, our beaches are beautiful, but they are dangerous. Every year, there's probably 50 to 60 drownings on our beaches, which is terrible, because these people are going there to have fun and recreate, and technically any drowning is preventable if people hadn't been swimming in the wrong place or the wrong time. He thinks money would be better spent increasing life-saving coverage at beaches across the state, although he gets the fear factor, we're not always rational. Drownings don't really get much attention at all,

14:13but really comes down to fear factor. I mean, sharks evoke fear. I think it's a primal fear amongst humans, anyone who enters the ocean is probably in some way, shape, or form, thinking about sharks, and you can use the statistics and say, well, your form or like the Dictive by lightning or getting in your car to go to the beach, which is all true, but it doesn't seem to resonate. So, on this says this is about better understanding shark populations and behavior, and equipping Australians with knowledge to make informed decisions when they are at the beach, giving them a bit of peace of mind. We don't want this to be the only significant upweif in surveillance and accuracy of information. We want to constantly embrace technology as it comes to be able to get that information out to the public better and to the people that are making decisions around whether a beach is open or not. elsewhere in Australia, Queensland is going a different way. It's $88 million four-year shark control plan

15:14is expanding drones, but it's also expanding traditional shark nets and drum lines. Western Australia has no nets and no drum lines at all. Instead, it relies on acoustic listening stations that ping when a tagged shark swims past, feeding straight into a public app, so people can check for recent activity before they get into the water. For Sydney surfer, Gossage, even if she's being pulled out of the water more, she'd prefer to know. It does make you feel safer, for sure. Definitely makes you feel like you have some eyes and ears on the ground. I think knowledge is power to be honest. At the end of the day, I think we should all be aware of what that risk is. Like we're probably being blindly winging it, hoping that those sharks aren't really there, and the reality is that they probably have been there all this time. I think the more you know the better you can be prepared and I think we're all aware there are sharks in the ocean. And the advice from beach safety experts is clear. Swoon between the flags, understand rips, and remember that on the vast majority of Australia's coastline,

16:16patrolled or not, the water itself is the biggest risk. If you just spent a few minutes thinking about beach safety for every beach visit you go, whether you intend to swim to the flags or not, or if the beach has flags or not, you've just got to think about safety. Thanks for listening today. For more news like this, please click follow on the quickie wherever you get your podcasts, and please leave a rating and a review. Mama Mae acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Shop vans and Albertsons for fresh savings every time you shop. This week at vans and Albertsons, get fresh, boneless, skinless chicken breast for £199 per pound limit 10 pounds. And locally grown grape-ery cotton candy grapes are 2.99 per pound with digital coupon. Plus 24 packs of Canada dry or 7-up 12 ounce cans are 4.99 limit one with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vans or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.

17:20Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcarekit.com. Slash blue, urgentcarekit.com. Slash blue. This is Ashley Akinati from the Almost Hymnest Podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home,

18:21but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort day passes, start at just $1,500. Once you post your daycation, people are gonna ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous.