Parliament plunged into chaos as wild storms sweep across southeast Australia
The federal parliament was temporarily thrown into chaos after lights out as severe weather ravaged southeastern Australia.
A momentary power outage prompted jeers from the opposition, who held up their mobile phones with the lights on and pointed at Anthony Albanese and government MPs across the room, as the lights on the ceiling came back to life.
During the frenzy, MPs stood up, some laughing.
Speaker Milton Dick tried to gain traction by calling the crowd “order.”
“Members to my left will stop interfering,” he said.
Liberal MP Darren Chester smiled and twiddled his pen as he waved his mobile phone light.
“The parliament will continue,” he later said.
“We are in order, minister, continue,” he said to Health Minister Mark Butler, who was addressing the room when the power outage occurred.
This comes at a time when severe weather is affecting much of south-east Australia.
The Bureau of Meteorology warned that severe thunderstorms and large hailstones capable of producing damaging winds were detected just outside Sydney, near the Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens and the Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains, at 3pm on Wednesday.
The storm is moving westward, with wind gusts of up to 70 mph recorded at Nobby’s head.
In addition to the ACT, damaging wind warnings have also been issued for Wollongong, Nowra, Canberra, Goulburn, Bowral and Katoomba.
Wind gusts of 93 km/h were recorded at Canberra Airport at 13.29.
