House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Algal Bloom Algal Bloom The Hon. V.A. TARZIA House of Assembly Hartley Leader of the Opposition Algal Bloom The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:31): My question is to the Premier. What does the Premier say is the cause of the algal bloom? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain. Leave granted. The Hon. V.A. TARZIA House of Assembly Hartley Leader of the Opposition The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Recently, when experts from SARDI were asked— Members interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: Can members on my right please keep it down, and could you start the explanation again— The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: The Leader of Government Business will come to order. The Hon. V.A. TARZIA House of Assembly Hartley Leader of the Opposition The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: At a recent Senate inquiry, when an expert from SARDI was asked what caused it, the answer that was given was, 'There's a hypothesis, but there's no data to understand what the contributing factor was.' The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS House of Assembly Croydon Premier The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:33): I've got to say this is a new form of parliamentary tactics from the Leader of the Opposition to come in here and start reprosecuting questions around what causes the algal bloom when his members, his own watchdog, in a parliamentary inquiry furnished fake references regarding the algal bloom. This is quite extraordinary—quite extraordinary. We know the advice that the government has received. It's the same advice that our officials have been making clear on the public record around what are the major contributing factors to the algal bloom. Three major significant events have come together to inform the unprecedented algal bloom, starting with the River Murray floods, the marine heatwave and the nutrients that we see coming together in the water. The science tells us that those three events in conjunction with one another created an almost unprecedented set of circumstances that has contributed to the algal bloom. The algal bloom has precedents in terms of we have seen them before in other parts of the world, but to see one of this size and this scale in Australia is without precedent. That, of course, has had very severe consequences on a lot of people in this state and on our marine environment, which is why it has to be treated seriously, which means if you bounce into parliament and submit references, it might be worth you checking what those references are and what they say before you do so. Members interjecting: The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS House of Assembly Croydon Premier The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: You might want to check them out, mate. You might just want to punch them into Google yourself. We have taken the advice of our experts, including a scientific panel that the Deputy Premier has convened, and we have made sure that the advice that we receive we put on the public record. We make our officials available for questions, including in the budget and finance environment but, of course, our officials were in Budget and Finance receiving questions from members of the opposition regarding the algal bloom, members of the opposition who sat there and submitted references that they clearly didn't check out themselves. That is unbelievable. To take a parliamentary inquiry that is dealing with a natural disaster and then to seek to politicise it for their own purposes or their own out-there theories without fact-checking their own references that they submitted to the inquiry is somewhat extraordinary. Our collective responsibility is to the people of this state and the natural environment that we are the custodians of, which means we check things, we ask questions, we do the scrutiny, and we put the advice on the public record. We don't seek to push the barrow of theories and references that don't check out if you take the time to indeed check them out. It appears as though Mr Pangallo hasn't done that himself. That is an extraordinary set of circumstances that doesn't stand the test of scrutiny, which leaves the Leader of the Opposition with the choice that he either stands by dodgy documents or he doesn't. He is either serious about addressing the algal bloom on the basis of science or he stands with Frank Pangallo and conspiracy. We know where we stand. Now it's time to find out where the Leader of the Opposition stands.