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The federal Senate is likely to convene an inquiry into the deadly algal bloom in South Australia, as the Greens warn the crisis is a sign of things to come for the country.
A motion from Labor senator Karen Grogan and Liberal Andrew McLachlan – both South Australians – as well as Nationals senator Ross Cadell, is to be moved on Wednesday, seeking to set up a Senate inquiry into the environmental issue.
The motion, posted on the Senate’s website on Tuesday, calls on the Environment and Communications References Committee to report back, by 28 October, on water quality, tourism, ecosystem health, Indigenous communities, fishing, and the responses of state and federal governments.
It also calls for investigation of research and monitoring, as well as prevention strategies.
Earlier, the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, said the state’s algal bloom, which has caused mass deaths among hundreds of marine species, should be described as a natural disaster.
Speaking to the ABC’s News Breakfast program, Malinauskas warned “politicians can do themselves a disservice when they get caught up in technicalities”.
The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, announced a $14m assistance package on Monday but stopped short of declaring the crisis a natural disaster because he said it did not meet the relevant definitions under the federal natural disaster framework.
“From the South Australian government’s perspective, I want to be really clear about this. This is a natural disaster … ” Malinauskas said.
“There are over 400 different species of marine life that have been killed off or have had deaths as a result of this algal bloom.”
According to records, it has killed over 13,800 animals, but experts predict the figure is much higher.
Malinauskas said he used the words natural disaster “quite deliberately” but that the disaster differed from other emergencies, such as bushfires, that Australians were familiar with.
“This is so entirely unprecedented we don’t really know how it’s going to play out over coming weeks and months ahead,” he said.
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Watt visited South Australia on Monday to view the effects of the toxic algal bloom that has littered the state’s beaches with masses of dead fish, rays, sharks, dolphins and other marine life.
It followed pressure from South Australians for the federal government to offer immediate support for affected places and businesses.
As parliament returned on Tuesday, Greens environment spokesperson and South Australian senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, described the $14m as a “down payment” and called on the government to “get out of their bureaucratic spin” and “declare this the emergency it is”.
The Greens said the first private member’s bill the party would introduce in the new parliament would be a bill proposing a “climate trigger” under Australia’s national environmental laws.
Hanson-Young said the algal bloom “crippling” communities in her home state showed the real damage the climate crisis was causing to the environment and to businesses. She confirmed she would also move this week for the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry into the algal bloom disaster.
“It is South Australia’s beaches that are today being littered with the rotting carcasses of marine life and thousands of fish, dolphins, other marine life,” she said.
“It’s Adelaide beaches today, but it could be Bondi tomorrow, and that is why we need rules and responses that are fit for the crisis we face, the modern issues that we need to grapple with, these challenges that are facing us.”
On Monday night, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said federal funding had been timed “appropriately” given the event was unfolding “primarily in state waters”.
“Events do occur in our environment,” the prime minister told ABC’s 7.30. “What is important is that there be a response. We’re responding, giving support to the South Australian government.”
