Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Throsby for her question and acknowledge her keen interest in the government’s position on opposing the killing of whales. I will be leading Australia’s delegation to the International Whaling Commission meeting in Chile, where I will introduce the Australian government’s proposal for a new future for the International Whaling Commission—a proposal that has attracted strong support from like-minded nations. This proposal has three elements: internationally agreed cooperative conservation plans for whales; collaborative research programs; and reform of the management of science, including an end to the granting of special permits for so-called scientific whaling. These proposals are underpinned by firm commitments and real science, including an extra $1 million from the government for the Australian Marine Mammal Centre to continue its non-lethal research program and to establish international cooperative research programs and conservation management plans for the great whales of the Southern Ocean.

Last Saturday I released a progress report on the global study I have commissioned of the science and economics of whale conservation. This study is bolstering our call for better protection of whales and providing important data to support our case at the IWC. Just this week members may have seen further scientific analysis of the threats climate change poses to whales—in particular, the potential impacts of shrinking Antarctic sea ice on whales’ critical habitats. This accumulation of new and existing threats is the reason why we must do all we can and why the government is committed to bringing an end to commercial whaling in all its forms. It is an approach that recognises that it is not good enough to go through the motions—like the last 12 years of ritualised, lacklustre and unfocused policy under the Liberal Party and like the last 12 years of rhetoric and press releases which produced nothing. We accept the need to strive for reform of the IWC and to work both inside and outside the commission to increase the protection of whales. That is why we have embarked on enhanced diplomatic efforts and why we continue to pursue a range of actions the previous government never contemplated.

I am surprised that the opposition is not supporting the Rudd Labor government’s reform proposals, given we are the only nation with a constructive proposal of this scope on the table at the International Whaling Commission. I look at what happened on the previous government’s watch and I see that the number of whales targeted by Japan more than doubled between 2004-05 and 2005-06. It doubled from 440 to more than 900, including a quota of endangered fin whales. That was on the previous government’s watch, and that is where we find ourselves today. When the member for Flinders was trying to defend 12 years of inaction, he told the ABC on 15 January:

Well, let’s be clear that we won every vote in the International Whaling Commission year after year.

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