South Australia announces $50 dining cash back vouchers to prop up coastal tourism amid algal bloom crisis

From a steak dinner at the pub to a fish-and-chips takeout, South Australians are in line for thousands of free $50 meal vouchers in a bold new bid to get them out and dining at restaurants battered by the state’s rolling algal bloom crisis.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas announced the $15m program on Monday morning, saying it had been devised with the federal government to stimulate demand in coastal communities confronting a downturn in visitor numbers ahead of the crucial summer travel season.

“It’s unique, it’s new and it’s a big investment,” he said alongside federal Environment Minister Murray Watt outside the popular beachside Bacchus Bar restaurant in Adelaide’s Henley Beach.

“We anticipate it will stimulate a huge amount of demand in coastal communities.”

The program will allocate 60,000 vouchers through a public ballot each month from November.

The cashback vouchers cover $50 at eligible establishments located in communities hit by the bloom.

“Spend $100, you get $50 back,” Mr Malinauskas said.

Bacchus Bar owner Jodi Dimond said the vouchers were a “great idea”.

“I definitely think it will bring people from the other side of town,” she said.

The vouchers are only available to South Australians.

The toxic bloom, first detected in March, has killed an estimated 13,000 marine wildlife and smashed the state’s lucrative seafood and tourism industries.

Some 30 per cent of South Australia’s coastline has been impacted.

Port Lincoln Mayor Diana Mislov, speaking at a federal senate hearing into the crisis, said her iconic town had felt the impact of the bloom, even though it had not hit Spencer Gulf shorelines to the same extent as the adjacent Gulf of St Vincent.

“I’ve had stories – a fisherman fishes for squid, he hasn’t seen squid since April in our bays.

“So those fishermen are having to drive to the west coast, take their boats over there – 600km away – and go fishing from those locations.

“Maybe they are sustaining their revenue but at a much-reduced price, and it is costing them extra in fuel expenses and travel time.”

She said tourism parks and recreational fishing shops were all suffering revenue losses.

Mr Watt, speaking on Monday, said the dining cashback program would help tourism and hospitality businesses get through “the hard times”.

“South Australians can rest assured, as long as this event goes on, the federal government will be working very closely with the Malinauskas government to support South Australia through it.”

The South Australian and federal governments are scrambling to manage the fallout from the bloom, which continues to roll on and threatens to produce large-scale lay-offs in the embattled seafood and tourism industries.

Marine biologist Shauna Murray said scientists and government officials were still largely in the dark about the root causes of the bloom and how it might develop and alter the environment.

“We are dealing with something that is just really hard,” she told NewsWire last month.

“If you imagine when Covid first started and there was a massive amount of science needed just to work out what was going on. We’re in a similar situation with this bloom.

“It’s not that it is something is really known in other places and we just don’t know it. It’s new.”