An Australian lawmaker dangled a floppy dead salmon in the country’s senate on Wednesday, accusing the government of falling hook, line and sinker for polluting industrial fish farms.
Environmental advocates have questioned the practices of intensive salmon farms in the island state of Tasmania, accusing them of choking waterways with waste and fish faeces.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said she was fed-up to the gills with a government that refused to enforce more stringent environmental standards.
“On the eve of an election, have you sold out your environmental credentials for a rotten, stinking extinction salmon,” she said on a live feed of the proceedings, briefly pausing to heft the fish on to her desk.
A fellow Greens senator sitting behind her cried out: “It stinks”.
She was swiftly ordered to remove the salmon — sheathed in a plastic bag — from the chamber.
Conservationists fear salmon farms are driving the extinction of the native Maugean skate, an endangered bottom-dwelling fish that looks something like a stingray.
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed his support for the industry, which supports hundreds of jobs in Tasmania.
Australia has a history of questionable props being smuggled into the debating chamber.
Former conservative prime minister Scott Morrison once goaded renewable energy advocates by waving a lump of coal from the dispatch box.
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