What is happening with SA’s algal bloom?<\/a><\/p>\nSouth Australia is dealing with an “unprecedented” environmental disaster, which has spread throughout the coastline, killing thousands of sea creatures. And it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon.<\/p>\n
While he described Australia as a country that had “always had natural disasters”, he drew a distinction between the bloom and other events like floods and bushfires.<\/p>\n
“There’s a specific program that’s for floods and for bushfires,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is something that is a different form of environmental event that is having a significant impact.”<\/p>\n
Mr Albanese defended federal environment minister Murray Watt and said he was a prime minister who represented “the whole country, not just Canberra”.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t an event that Murray Watt has created or that any individual has created. This is an event as a result of confluence of events combining to create this impact,” he said.<\/p>\n
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Mr Albanese, pictured at an Adelaide biolab, says he does not want to “get into semantics”. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n
The prime minister today also announced a new funding stream for “significant ecological” events under the government’s regional investment corporation, but did not commit any specific amount.<\/p>\n
He described suggestions that the federal government would have acted sooner if the bloom had been along the east coast as “absolute nonsense”.<\/p>\n
“I have been to South Australia six times this year,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I have been to South Australia I reckon more than any prime minister over the period of \u2026 less than three-and-a-half years. I compare that with any prime minister since federation, probably, but certainly in the last 30 years that is the case.”<\/p>\n
‘Don’t bother coming’<\/p>\n
South Australian opposition leader Vincent Tarzia earlier called on Mr Albanese to declare the algal bloom a natural disaster, saying that if he did not do so he should not “bother coming at all”.<\/p>\n
“The time for sympathy and platitudes has long passed, what is needed along our coastline is the acknowledgement of the natural disaster this clearly is,” Mr Tarzia said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“There were heavy rains in Queensland a flood of relief came almost instantly.<\/p>\n
“Yet here in South Australia we have to see businesses go to the wall before we even qualify for a token visit.”<\/p>\n
Mr Tarzia later repeated a call for “COVID-like assistance so that businesses \u2026 can continue to get some relief”.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a media conference with Mr Tarzia, Mostyn Brown \u2014 a fishing tackle business owner in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs \u2014 said he had noticed a “quite significant” downturn in trade since May.<\/p>\n
“This is a natural disaster. It’s something that \u2026 could be possibly caused from the Murray floodwaters which flushed out a lot of stagnant blackwater and nutrients,” he said.<\/p>\n
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Mr Tarzia with business owner Mostyn Brown, who says he is struggling to pay wages and bills. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n
Mr Brown said his current personal circumstances fall “short of [the] criteria” for financial assistance, and while he had been advised that that could change, there were no guarantees.<\/p>\n
The business owner, who became emotional as he spoke, has written to state and federal MPs, saying he cannot afford to pay bills and wages.<\/p>\n
He said the bloom had “scared” off a “majority of our customers”, and that he “needs support badly”.<\/p>\n
“It could finish me off in the business which I love,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I could lose my home but what I’m trying to do is downsize by some sort of bridging finance to look for another house, and then put ours on the market so we can cover our debts.”<\/p>\n
The prime minister and SA premier today revealed another element of the state-federal $28 million algal bloom support package.<\/p>\n
Mr Malinauskas said Adelaide-based Agilex Biolabs would be supported to carry out testing for brevetoxins, which have been detected in local shellfish.<\/p>\n
While brevetoxins are not believed to be caused by Karenia mikimotoi, they can be caused by other Karenia species which are believed to be present in the algal bloom.<\/p>\n
Mr Malinauskas said that there had previously been no local capacity for brevetoxin testing, and that samples had to go to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Agilex is now embarking on a whole new capability that Australia does not have,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Currently when we are testing within our shellfish, particularly oysters for the brevetoxin which is a product of at least some form of the algae, that testing has to take place in New Zealand.”<\/p>\n
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Mr Malinauskas says brevetoxin testing currently has to be done overseas. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n
Mr Malinauskas said he had also spoken to Mr Albanese about the state government’s summer plan, in the event the bloom continues well into the warmer months.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully, we don’t have to utilise [that],” he said.<\/p>\n
“But if we do, I know that the federal government is all too willing to hear from us.<\/p>\n
“We remain hopeful that the algal bloom dissipates but we’re not naive to the fact that that may indeed not happen \u2014 in fact, I’m of the view that it’s becoming increasingly likely that the bloom will be here in some form at least during spring.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he does not want to “get into semantics” over categorising South Australia’s devastating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11949,11950,2324,64,63,11951,8168,6349,62641,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-82923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-algae","9":"tag-algal","10":"tag-anthony-albanese","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-bloom","14":"tag-fish","15":"tag-fishing","16":"tag-gulf","17":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82923","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=82923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}