![\"dead,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a4f542db5570d92c3b859976f297dc9d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nSouth Australian public servants were encouraged to remove words such as “harmful” and “disaster” from public communications about the ongoing algal bloom impacting the state’s coastlines, according to documents released to the opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the documents released to the Liberal Party under Freedom of Information laws were suggested edits made to advertorials paid for by the government.<\/p>\n
Those edits requested the words “outbreak” and “harmful” be removed, and instructed the word “disaster” be replaced with “event”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dead fish started washing up on South Australian beaches as the harmful algal bloom drifted along the coast.\u00a0 (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)<\/p>\n
There were also emails released, including one by a Department for Environment and Water team leader which labelled the removal of the word “harmful” as “bizarre advice”.<\/p>\n
“Some suggested minor tweeks [sic] and also incorporating the bizarre advice from coms to drop ‘harmful’,” the email read.<\/p>\n
The documents show that public servants were repeatedly told to remove the word “harmful” from communications.<\/p>\n
SA Premier doubles down on algal bloom health messaging<\/a><\/p>\n SA Premier Peter Malinauskas doubled down on public health messaging about the state’s algal bloom after questions were raised by the ABC’s Four Corners program.<\/p>\n An email from the Department for Premier and Cabinet sent in August 2025 requested for the word “harmful” be removed from the “Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) situation update page”.<\/p>\n “We were wondering if the name of the page could be updated as the campaign\u2019s objective is to reassure the community and the use of the word ‘harmful’ is a bit alarming \u2013 people could interpret this as being harmful to their own health,” the email reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n “If we could update to Algal bloom update, it would align with the campaign messaging and have a more neutral tone.”<\/p>\n A PIRSA website page titled “Algal bloom situation update<\/a>” has no mention of the word “harmful”.<\/p>\n The state government’s Algal Bloom Update website says the algae “is harmful to fish and some marine animals<\/a>“.<\/p>\n Information on the marine algal bloom was disseminated by the state government. (ABC News: Sarah Maunder)<\/p>\n Among the documents were edits to a letter to be sent out regarding rescheduling a public event due to “ongoing uncertainty” about the algal bloom, which recommended the removal of the word “harmful” in September 2025.<\/p>\n One response labelled that “bizarre”, while other emails mentioned it was “now being referred to as algal bloom in the Department’s proactive communications \u2014 removing harmful”.<\/p>\n “I\u2019d just remove \u2018harmful\u2019 in the version for service providers to match how proactive comms appears to be referring to algal bloom,” another email read.<\/p>\n Call for ‘truth’ over ‘spin’<\/p>\n Liberal environment spokesperson Nicola Centofanti said South Australians “just want the truth” about the algal bloom.<\/p>\n “Time and time again, we have seen this government more focused on PR than people and more focused on spin over substance and I think the people of South Australia are getting pretty sick of it,” she said.<\/p>\n She again called for a royal commission<\/a> into the bloom on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Ultimately, South Australians have so many questions about the algal bloom that need answering,” she said.<\/p>\n The word “harmful” was struck through in a letter to be sent out appearing to reschedule an event due to the impact of the algal bloom. (Supplied: SA Liberal Party)<\/p>\n At a press conference this morning, Premier Peter Malinauskas appeared bemused as he told reporters \u201cI don\u2019t know why anyone would contemplate doing that\u201d, referring to the claims people within government wanted to stop using the word “harmful”.<\/p>\n “Particularly given that I and other senior members of the government have been very clear about the fact that the algal bloom is the harmful algal bloom,” he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been consistent about that.\u201d<\/p>\n In October 2025, the premier said the algal bloom was not “toxic”<\/a>, and doubled down on that in March<\/a> after the ABC’s Four Corners investigation into the toxic algal bloom<\/a>.<\/p>\n The government has recently labelled the bloom as “gone<\/a>“, but countless fish deaths have been recorded since the bloom was first detected on SA’s Fleurieu Peninsula<\/a> in March 2025, and there were new fishing restrictions<\/a> introduced last week to help recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Australian public servants were encouraged to remove words such as “harmful” and “disaster” from public communications about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13402,43,44,24805,255590,1124,314237,41,39,42,40,102214],"class_list":["post-649725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-harmful-algal-bloom","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-peter-malinauskas","tag-sa-liberal-party","tag-south-australia","tag-south-australia-government","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-toxic-algal-bloom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4ac24435468288e917f2307a70a2f44d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/52996801b13eb9e9f4cf6e47af6af0a5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n