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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-18 Daily Xml
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Algal Bloom

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:28): My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier do more to help Mostyn Brown and other business owners like him whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the harmful algal bloom crisis? With your leave, sir, and that out of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Mostyn will be forced to shut the doors of his beloved business, Gotcha Fishing Tackle, after more than a quarter of a century.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:29): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. So some weeks ago, Mostyn Brown emailed the Liberal Party with completely accurate addresses, including the Liberal Party candidate for Dunstan, and then also emailed some Labor Party candidates and MPs, and those email addresses, interestingly, just had slight little errors in them—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: People make mistakes, we know that. My office got the email and we made sure we reached out to Mr Brown. In fact, someone from my own office went and met with Mr Brown. They had a really good conversation and we made clear that we were very keen to help. You may recall that when the Leader of the Opposition first stood up with Mr Brown he had not yet had the opportunity to even lodge an application for the support that the government is very keen to provide.

The next time, what I would say to the Leader of the Opposition is that our gratuitous advice is, if the Leader of the Opposition or any other member of the parliament comes across a business that would like some support from the government regarding the algal bloom, they should apply for it. That is the first job. One of my staff met with Mr Brown and encouraged him to apply, and he then got around to it and did.

That application was going through the process and it was established that his downturn in business—the amount that we set was a 30 per cent downturn and you qualify—was not at that 30 per cent level. In fact, he was quite a bit short of it. We said that we would continue to work with him. We were working with the application and then the government subsequently received an email from Mr Brown's accountant, who contacted the government and explained, 'Please hold the application, sales are going up. Hold the application.' That was the advice, so we acted on the instruction of Mr Brown's accountant and then held the application as we were advised to do so.

I am also advised that at the Leader of the Opposition's press conference—and I haven't witnessed the press conference; I am acting on some preliminary advice, so I qualify my remarks by saying that—Mr Brown, during the course of the press conference, did not indeed confirm in absolute terms the closure of the business, as was characterised by the Leader of the Opposition on ABC radio this morning, the same radio interview where he continued to hold a flame to the idea that all the experts providing advice to the government regarding the harmful algal bloom is caused by desal.

This invites a few questions. The sense of urgency and desperation on behalf of the opposition generally to politicise the algal bloom has them racing towards the watchdog's AI fake documents and also racing towards other examples they might be able to elevate of people who need help who have not yet applied for the very help they say they want access to. As a government, what we are focusing on is the science and the facts and providing help to those who need it. We want to minimise the number of people who need that help by speaking accurately about the algal bloom rather than seeking to catastrophise it and make the problem worse than what it already is.

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