An Australian senator brandished a dead fish in the middle of a hemicycle – Liberation
Not sure that his fish is fresh. An elected ecologist created the feeling this Wednesday, March 26, in the Australian Senate by brandishing a dead salmon in the hemicycle in order to denounce the effects of intensive fish farming. Senator in the south of the country, Sarah Hanson-Young protested the government’s bill aimed at protecting Controversial salmonicultural farms In a cove classified as World Heritage of the State of Tasmania. The bill is currently debated in the Senate, where it should be adopted in the last days of the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, before the general elections scheduled for May.
Criticizing the text during parliamentary questions on Wednesday, senator from the Greens Sarah Hanson-Young accused the government of « Empty their substance » environmental protections to support a « Toxic and polluting salmon industry ». She released a whole -died salmon in a plastic bag while asking Labor Senator Jenny McAlister, representative of the Minister of the Environment: « On the eve of the elections, did you sell your environmental references to a degenerate salmon, rotten and stinking ? « .
Immediately, the hemicycle agreed. The president of the Senate Sue Lines asked Sarah Hanson-Young to take out the animal. And Jenny McAlister replied: « My point of view is that the Australians deserve better from their public representative than advertising blows ”. The proposed laws would guarantee salmon farming in the Macquarie Harbor bay, listed as World Heritage, on the west coast of Tasmania and would reduce the public’s ability to challenge authorizations.
The Albanese Labor Party argued that the bill was necessary to protect jobs in the salmon farming industry in Tasmania. But environmental groups and the Green Party are concerned about pollution by nutrients and chemicals caused by industry, and its effects on marine fauna, including the rare line of Maugean, which is only found in Tasmania.
