Labor’s algae spin exposed

An investigation by the State Opposition has uncovered multiple examples of Government spin doctors banning the words ‘outbreak’ and ‘harmful’ from communications about the algal bloom.

The Freedom of Information documents reveal instructions coming from staff within the Premier’s own department, as well as the Environment Department’s PR team.

Shadow Minister for Environment and Water, Dr Nicola Centofanti, said the investigation shows the spin machine in full force.

“First, the Premier was avoiding the word ‘toxic’ at all costs, now we have evidence of the words ‘harmful’, ‘outbreak’ and ‘disaster’ being removed from public communications as late as December last year,” Dr Centofanti said.

“One experienced environmentalist refers to the directive as ‘bizarre’ and I could not agree more.

“It is outrageous the lengths the Government’s propaganda unit will go to in order to exercise complete control.

“You cannot claim to be acting in the public interest while withholding language that accurately reflects the risk.

“When you have the Premier’s own staff issuing these directives, it’s impossible to believe he had no involvement or knowledge of this happening.

“The Premier needs to explain why his Government was more focused on tone than truth.”

Summary of FOI documents:

1. September email trail from Green Adelaide seeking approval for correspondence to cancel a series of beach events over concerns around “updated health advice.” They received advice from DEW that “the Dept has removed ‘harmful’ from most of their proactive comms.” The word was then removed from the correspondence.
2. August email trail from Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) communications officer reprimanding a DEW staffer for an online article with the advice: “We are striving to refrain from negative references such as ‘harmful’”.
3. August email trail from a DPC communications officer to PIRSA about the title of a webpage saying:“the campaign’s objective is to reassure the community and the use of the word harmful is a bit alarming – people could interpret this as being harmful to their own health. If we could update to Algal bloom update, it would align with the campaign messaging and have a more neutral tone.”
4. DPC revisions made to an advertorial in November: “do not use outbreak” “remove harmful” “remove harmful” “remove ‘this is an unprecedented event and people want to identify a single smoking gun’”
5. DPC Revisions made to an advertorial in December: “remove harmful” “remove outbreak” “replace ‘disaster’ with ‘event’”