A dead fish, two cash-snorting pigs, and a Tina Turner dress-up: The strangest moments from the 47th parliament of Australia
With the 2025 federal election called, the 47th parliament of Australia has been dissolved, ending a three-year term that played host to some particularly peculiar moments.
From dead fish to cash-snorting pigs, here are some of the most eye-catching displays from Australia's elected officials.
Speaker Milton Dick said there was no issue with the Greens MP turning up to work tie-less.
And it didn't take long for Chandler-Mather to cause consternation among other MPs, with his relentless and vocal advocacy for strong measures to combat the housing crisis proving a more or less constant thorn in the government's side.
Chandler-Mather wasn't the only MP to make headlines for a first-speech fashion choice: independent Dai Le won plenty of admirers for her áo dài – the traditional dress of her native Vietnam – emblazoned with the Australian flag.
In the other house, senator Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman, made a statement when she was sworn in.
"I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising her majesty Queen Elizabeth II."
Funnily enough, "colonising" is not in the formal oath parliamentarians are required to swear, and Thorpe was forced to re-recite it before taking her seat in the upper house.
In March 2023, deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley turned up to parliament dressed as Tina Turner.
There was a very good reason behind the unusual get-up: cancer fundraising, as Ley explained to the House of Representatives.
"Let me introduce my alter ego, Tina 'Ley-na' Turner, and this is worth a fair bit of cash," she said.
"At a cancer support fundraiser held in Griffith last Friday, my song partner Glenn Starr from the local Triple M breakfast challenged the 700-strong crowd to reach a $100,000 target but only if I took Tina to Parliament House."
Former prime minister Scott Morrison called time on his career as a politician this term, giving his valedictory speech in early 2024.
During the farewell address, Morrison thanked family, friends and colleagues.
And while he wore a classic, Cronulla Sharks-coloured tie, it was something he was wearing on his wrist that was particularly novel.
It was a Taylor Swift friendship bracelet, the likes of which had been doing the rounds during the pop megastar's Australian tour.
This one, Morrison said, "has 'ScoMo' on it".
He went one step further during the speech, working the name of every one of Swift's albums into his address after a request from his two children, Abbey and Lily.
"Anything for my daughters," Morrison said.
Perhaps the strangest pictures this parliament provided (although there was some excellent competition very late in the term, which we'll come to) were these ones: independent MPs Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie dressed in inflatable pig costumes, snorting from a couple of troughs filled with cash.
It was part of the pair's protest against what Katter described as the "piggy" profits of supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths, who were both firmly faced with public anger as Australians struggled with high grocery prices.
"It's about $3.60 per kg for the potatoes that customers pay for at the supermarket, and they pay the farmer about 99 cents per kg," Katter said.
"But it doesn't matter if we're talking about bananas, eggs, milk, sugar or avocados, it's the same.
"I mean are we just going to let them continue screwing the farmers down through the floor and charging the consumers a squillion dollars."
Two years later, and supermarket prices are still a key election issue during the campaign, with Anthony Albanese promising a crackdown if re-elected.
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