Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I refer to South Australia's algal bloom crisis. When does a government's failure to act become a decision to conceal? That is the question South Australians are asking, and it is the question this parliament should keep demanding answers to. The ABC's Four Corners program aired a damning investigation into the algal bloom crisis that continues to devastate South Australia's coastline, our marine life and our communities. What it revealed was deeply troubling. How is it that the South Australian public was kept in the dark by the state and federal Labor government? Surely, it wasn't an oversight or just bad luck.

Following the deaths of countless thousands of marine animals, there was the death of about 100 kangaroos that had to be euthanised in March 2025 due to the presence of harmful toxins in their organs—the same ones that were found in the ocean. How was that not known? Or did the government choose instead to just look the other way? South Australians reported stinging eyes, coughing, rashes, headaches and breathing difficulties. They presented to medical centres. They desperately took their sick animals to emergency vets. Yet the advice from governments, state and federal, remained unchanged.

How is your system so broken that you didn't know, if that is your reason for no action? How is it that you didn't know? How did your actions fall so well short of public expectations that you just told them that? This very Senate conducted an inquiry into the algal bloom. It began in July 2025 and concluded in November, yet remarkably no federal department, other than the Bureau of Meteorology, appeared as a witness or made a submission. How is that?

I note that yesterday you formally responded to the report, but we already know that much of the information is missing. So I return to where I began: What was your government's failure? Was it a calculated decision to conceal? I believe so.