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

I was pleased to inform the House last week that the government has also committed more than $6 million to kick-start non-lethal whale research and other critical conservation programs in 2008-09. We contemplate a groundbreaking partnership in the Southern Ocean open to all countries to demonstrate that the central research into whales can be carried out without killing a single whale.

I note that the member for Flinders immediately rushed out once this announcement was made and said, ‘Oh, the government’s rushed this out as an attempted diversion.’ If anyone had been diverted, it was the member for Flinders, given that I announced the proposal for the Southern Ocean research program in a media statement in March of this year. The member opposite had eight months to understand the proposal, so perhaps it seems a little rushed in terms of his response.

Let me continue: the clear commitment that the government made was to give careful and serious consideration to the options for potential legal action against Japan’s Antarctic whale program. With that in mind, we have carefully analysed the information obtained through our monitoring of the Antarctic fleet last summer. As the House would be aware, the Oceanic Viking has now successfully completed its monitoring activity that it undertook at the request of this government. I am pleased to report to the House that this was a successful mission. The Oceanic Viking is now returning to the ordinary course of duties. It has a critical task patrolling the Southern Ocean for illegal and unauthorised fishing activities. But again, the member for Flinders sprang out of the box last Friday and accused the government this time of having ‘waved the white flag and given the green light to Japan to press ahead with the killing season’, as if this is the view of the government. As it turned out, the member for Flinders is always out of the box very quickly—whether it is jumping out of aeroplanes despite the record demand for solar panels or whether it is accusing us of giving up on whales because we have collected valuable evidence. I note that the Leader of the Opposition—

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