South Australia's algal bloom: protecting nature, people and businesses is one in the same.
- Eyre Peninsula EPA
- Aug 31, 2025
- 2 min read
Australian Conservation Foundation
The good thing about human activities is that we can change them.
To prevent further catastrophes like the one facing South Australia, the Federal Government must stop approving coal and gas projects, and it must place the protection of nature at the centre of all decision making.
This isn’t just a moral imperative, it’s an economic one. As Treasury Secretary Ken Henry recently said at the National Press Club, single biggest threat to Australia’s future productivity comes from the destruction of nature.6
One way to ensure that nature is protected is to create national and enforceable laws that stop unacceptable impacts on threatened plants, animals and places.
These stringent laws must be administered by an independent agency of experts (not a government with vested interests) and be used to assess whether projects get the go-ahead. Australians must feel confident that what’s being built and created in this country won’t worsen the ongoing nature and climate crises we’re seeing play out in South Australia.
As ministers of the Albanese government forge ahead with their productivity agenda, we need to remind them that nothing they’re hoping to achieve will come to fruition without nature’s ability to support it. The environmental and economic crisis currently playing out in Australia is testament to this.
Soon, senior ministers will hold “productivity roundtables”.
They will focus on three main themes:
Making our economy more productive,
building resilience, and
making Australia’s budget more sustainable.
Genuine progress on these themes can only be made if we embed nature into decision making and ensure that protecting nature is at the centre of our economic transitions. Many people is South Australia can testify that when nature suffers, our lives and livelihoods grind to a halt.
In the lead up to the roundtables, we have an opportunity to urge Albanese and his senior ministers who are hosting these events to position nature as Australia’s economic superpower, and to create rigorous and lasting national laws that protect the forests, reefs and rivers we all, including our prosperity, depend on.
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