Environmental policies are taking a back seat in the SA election. Should voters be worried?

The incumbent Liberal premier, Steven Marshall, touring bushfire-damaged Kangaroo Island in 2020. Despite natural disaster, debate in South Australia has largely steered away from environmental issues. Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

The last time South Australians went to the polls to vote in a new government, the state had become a battlefield in a bitter national debate on the climate crisis.

A violent storm in 2016 had whipped up two tornadoes – unheard of in that part of the world – and sent them barrelling down the centre of the continent, ripping through transmission lines and plunging the state into darkness.