By Christine Chen
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian senator pulled out a large, dead fish in Parliament on Wednesday to protest the government’s proposed laws that would safeguard controversial salmon farms in a heritage-listed inlet in the state of Tasmania.
The bill is being debated by the Senate, where it is expected to pass in the final days of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government ahead of a general election due by May.
Criticising the bill during parliamentary question time on Wednesday, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused the government of “gutting” environmental protections to support a “toxic, polluting salmon industry”.
She produced a whole dead salmon in a plastic bag while asking Labor senator Jenny McAllister, representing the Environment Minister, “On the eve of the election, have you sold out your environmental credentials for a rotten, stinking extinction salmon?”
After some commotion and Senate president Sue Lines asking Hanson-Young to remove “the prop”, McAllister replied: “My view is Australians deserve better from their public representative than stunts”.
The proposed laws would guarantee salmon farming in the world-heritage-listed Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast and reduce the ability of the public to challenge approvals.
Albanese’s Labor party has maintained the bill is necessary to protect jobs in Tasmania’s salmon farming industry.
But environmental groups and the Green party are concerned about the nutrient and chemical pollution caused by the industry, and its effects on marine wildlife including the rare Maugean skate, only found in the Macquarie and Bathurst Harbours in Tasmania.
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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