Dear editor,
To hear that our federal government’s slow response to the algal bloom, which has had significant effects on the South Australian coastline since October last year, was in part because it didn’t meet their defined criteria of a natural disaster, is just being semantic.
With their definition being that a natural disaster “is a serious disruption to a community or region caused by a naturally occurring event that threatens or causes death, injury, or damage to property or the environment, requiring significant and coordinated multi-agency and community response, that includes events like bushfires, floods, storms, cyclones, and earthquakes”, an algal bloom is not considered as requiring their support, attention or action.
A more inclusive definition would cover all natural disasters, like droughts and algal blooms, if it were not currently defined specifically as events like “bushfires, floods, storms, cyclones, and earthquakes”.
This extremely slow response has most probably played a major role in the growth and spread of the algal bloom, imposing significant environmental, economic and social impacts on South Australia.
Ian Macgowan, Ceduna
