MPI – Environment

Many members in this House may not know this—I will start with a small snapshot of my life—but I grew up in South Australia and spent my childhood playing on the beaches of the Yorke Peninsula, crab fishing in Ardrossan, eating King George whiting for breakfast and flattening out calamari with beer bottles. Mum used to fry them in the pan for breakfast, freshly caught in the Gulf of St Vincent. And what I want to talk about today is the disappointment of the South Australian people, who have been let down miserably by this government, because, today, that beach, in the great electorate—magnificent electorate—of Grey, is a very, very different place. I want to talk about a matter of great national importance: the government’s failure on the algal bloom that has been blooming for months and has significantly affected coastal South Australia in the Gulf of St Vincent but also in the Port River region and on Adelaide beaches.

Scientists in South Australia have been asking this government for 18 months—18 months!—for $4 million over 10 years to fund monitoring of the Great Southern Reef and the algal bloom that has been reported as killing 13,800 marine creatures since March of this year alone and affecting over 400 species. Notable marine species are squid, which I talked about; octopus; cuttlefish; benthic sharks; rays; sea dragons; lobsters; reef fish; and seagrass fauna. Beach monitoring has logged nearly 5,000 wash-up events as of June 2025, with thousands more seen offshore. The Albanese government has, under two ministers, failed to respond to the scientists for 18 months. The Albanese government failed to respond when the marine life started washing up dead on the beach in March. This calamity has harmed the environment, and it has harmed the local community and the local economy.

My colleague Senator Ross Cadell has been working hard to support the local fishing businesses, and he knows that industry leaders like the oyster farmer Steve Bowley and Port Wakefield—there’s a great bakery there. I’ll shout-out the people that work at the Port Wakefield Bakery and the Kitchener buns that they have there. Oyster farmer Steve Bowley and Port Wakefield fisherman Bart Butson have spoken openly about the pain their communities are feeling with disappearing stocks, months-long shutdowns and no end or certainty in sight. It’s been over 80 days since Steve sold one oyster—one oyster!

The new member for Grey, Tom Venning, has spent time with members in his electorate who have been affected. The member for Grey knows that it’s been over 80 days since fisher Paul Germain has caught one single fish—one fish! And the member for Grey knows that Bart Butson, the local fisher at Port Wakefield who fishes in the Gulf of St Vincent, saw hundreds of dead cuttlefish floating on the sea and, from that time, has started to see southern calamari disappear—and now there are none to catch whatsoever. The significance of that is that they make up at least 30 per cent of the catch, and sometimes the whole catch, for these fishers. Trade has ceased—completely ceased—for commercial fishers at Port Vincent and at Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsula. And it’s a crying shame.

The member for Grey also knows that the wider impact on local businesses is devastating. Tourists are cancelling their holidays in caravan parks. They’re deserting local operators and hospitality venues. Stansbury publican Rob Rankine is 18 per cent down on last year for the corresponding 11 weeks. That’s over $1,000 a day of turnover he has lost. That is his livelihood; that is what he lives on. And it has stopped. Shopkeepers’ revenues are down 15 per cent. Businesses can’t cope with that. The Albanese government has failed the local fishing and tourism industries. There’s no certainty—none whatsoever—of when this situation will be overcome, unfortunately.

South Australians—all Australians—should be disappointed in this Labor government because all of this could have been prevented. It could have and should have been addressed much sooner. I mean, if our marine life had started washing up on Bondi Beach, on Coogee Beach, on Cottesloe Beach—goodness me! Member for Fremantle, if it had been there, I’m sure the minister would have been there much quicker. If this had been the Great Barrier Reef, it wouldn’t have taken the minister so long for. Instead, it took 18 months for the Albanese government to do, well, something. Under pressure from his colleagues, the minister did a mercy dash down to South Australia just before we reconvened in the parliament. He made a quick dash down there, to stand up and do a presser—

An opposition member: Look at the dead fish.

Ms BELL: Look at the dead fish quickly. I’m sure he didn’t walk along the Ardrossan jetty. He tried desperately not to show up. Where’s the minister representing the minister now? He’s not going to speak to this. Again, Labor is missing in action when it comes to the environment. You failed in the last term. Labor failed on their environmental policies last term. They did not reform the EPBC Act. They stalled—absolutely stalled.

While Labor’s drop-in-the-ocean funding announcement is certainly welcome—it is welcome; the people of South Australia welcome that tiny little bit of funding, of $10,000 per business. I mean, at the press conference, the minister didn’t even know what the money was for! He was just covering himself for the sittings in parliament after pressure, no doubt, from his Labor colleagues, from the coalition, the Liberal Party, from the Greens, and from South Australia. That’s what he was waiting for before his mercy dash down to South Australia.

During the last term, the then environment minister, the member for Sydney, proved completely unable to deliver Labor’s promise of an overhaul of the EPBC Act. She promised, multiple times, that the overhaul would be finalised by the end of 2023, but it was continually deferred. What we are left with is a very long process that doesn’t serve the environment and doesn’t serve jobs. It doesn’t serve industry. It doesn’t serve our great nation—our flora and fauna—but it doesn’t serve jobs or industry either. These determinations are taking too long, and it’s deeply concerning that Labor’s lack of action is causing investment in Australia to decline. It’s decreasing Australia’s attractiveness as a place to do business and, most importantly, it is costing livelihoods and jobs across the nation.

It’s important that we have an effective process that looks after the environment, because we care about the environment. Our environment has been going backwards under Labor.

Opposition members interjecting—

Ms BELL: Come on, the endangered species list has increased! You do not have a record on the environment that you can talk about. We care about the environment, and it’s important to have an effective process that looks after the environment and looks after the economy with a sensible balance.

Labor has failed on the environment. You’ve failed Australians. You’ve come into government and failed us again today. The minister representing the minister is missing from the chamber. Australians deserve better than this Labor government, which is clearly and ultimately missing in action. It failed to turn up on the South Australian algal bloom, it failed to deliver any outcomes, and it is failing Australians miserably.