Radio Interview- ABC North and West SA with Tom Mann
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC North and West SA
WEDNESDAY, 25 September 2025
SUBJECTS: Senate Inquiry into Algal Blooms in South Australia. Final day of hearings.
TOM MANN: HOST
Senator Karen Grogan is with me, Deputy Chair of the Senate Inquiry into algal blooms in South Australia. We're speaking following the public hearings wrapping up yesterday in Canberra. And one other element in terms of getting information more quickly - we saw announced in the package, the $28 million package, a local testing facility, which is set to be housed in Adelaide and speed up the testing processes. Can you speak to where that testing facility is at?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Yes. So they're up and running. They're just waiting to –– they need certification, obviously, and that's anticipated that all of that work should be finished and they'll be actually officially testing from October. So that's really good news because one of the challenges is the delay, having to send the samples over to New Zealand. It does mean that you're waiting a long time, which has a huge delay on our marine industries. If there's a risk that they may have some form of algal issue in their shellfish then they cease operations as a precaution and then that leaves them waiting weeks to get the testing back to see where they're at. So this will shorten that up and it'll also help us be more responsive. So we're really looking forward to that being up and running in October.
TOM MANN: HOST
Now Senator, leading our news stories today is the gap between the first detection and when the federal government was informed around the algal bloom. Is this a sign of communication breakdown between state and federal government or slow action from the state government? How would you characterise the gap in knowledge here?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
I think if you look at it just from the pure facts, I think when this was first detected, the strong advice was, and the experience we've had, because we've had this kind of algae bloom in a very small scale here before, where it dissipated within weeks. And so that was the thought. Algae tends to dissipate in colder weather. So we were coming in for autumn and winter. So there was a sense that it was going to dissipate. I think that's where people were at. They weren't thinking this was going to be a long-term, large-scale crisis like we've got now. So they weren't responding as if it was a crisis. They were responding as if they were just managing a bloom that would be gone in a few weeks or maybe a few months. So I think the conversations that were had were not had in that crisis sense. They were had in the sense of, oh, we've got a bloom going on here, and everyone's like, okay, sure, let us know. But then when were the sort of top of the food chain people from the various departments informed? It looks like that was a bit later. But I do know that there were conversations, there was a sense from one of the witnesses yesterday that the Minister wasn't informed until July. Well, I know Minister Watt and I know he and I were talking about it long before July. So I think that there's some unpacking to be done in of that evidence that was provided. Was the first official formal briefing done in July? That appears to be the case, yeah.
TOM MANN: HOST
Senator, I'm curious, we heard some pretty bold ideas when the hearings were moving through our region, including the potential for shutting down of professional fishing in Gulf St Vincent to allow for sea life there to recover. You know, as you mentioned, you didn't want to pre-empt the report, but are we likely to see some pretty major actions and bold ideas when the report is handed down to address the algal bloom? Given, you know, there has been a lot of really, and, you know, understandably so, wait and see in the hope that it does break up?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Yeah, you're right. The wait and see seems to have quite prominence because we don't know. And I suppose there's that kind of principle of first do no harm. And while we're not sure, we need to take every, the boldest action we can without actually causing further problems. So I think what we're trying to understand now is what's the impact on different marine species? Because it's vastly, vastly different. There are some fish who just go, oh, it's not real nice here. I'm just going to swim over here. And they're very mobile populations of marine life, they can just do that but there are other populations of marine life that don't have that mobility and they seem to be faring much worse so it could be that it's not a blanket scenario but it could be we have to do some work to try and revitalise the populations of certain marine species. How that occurs, we'll need to take further advice on.
TOM MANN: HOST
Senator, really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Thanks, Tom.
TOM MANN: HOST
Cheers. Senator Karen Grogan there, Deputy Chair of the Senate Inquiry into algal blooms in South Australia