Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting to note that the opposition spokesperson for the environment, Mr Hunt, said on Monday that the government should show it is serious about stopping whaling by supporting a bill in the Senate this week. He went on:

This week is the opportunity for Mr Rudd to support direct action to half Japanese whaling.

Then he went on to say—and he is talking about Mr Rudd:

Why will he not support the bill to end spy flights in support of Japanese whaling from Australian airports?

I, and I think most Australians, would interpret those comments to suggest that Mr Hunt was in favour on Monday—that is just two days ago—of our debating this bill in the Senate this week. Things have changed since Monday. It is interesting to note that two days ago the opposition thought this bill should have precedence, but on Wednesday they do not think that it deserves precedence anymore.

This is a substantive issue, Senator Ludwig, and it is essential that Australia does everything it can to stop the abhorrent practice of whaling in the Southern Ocean. It is essential that Australia amends its legislation as soon as possible to ensure that Australian resources and services are not used to support Japanese whaling. The government knows the Australian population is totally behind Australia’s policy of not supporting whaling in this country.

The bill is a fairly simple, short bill, which the opposition have signed onto. You will notice that Senator Abetz’s name was not on Senator Bernardi’s bill, but it is on this bill. He thinks that it is so important that he will put his name to a bill that the Greens put forward. He is prepared to overcome traditional rivalries to put his name to a bill that we have come up with and support, but he is not prepared to debate it. This is a fairly simple amendment that means that Australian services do not support whaling—something that nearly all Australians support. We could have a short, sharp debate and we could fix the bill now to ensure that next summer this does not happen again.

It is all very well for the government to say that they could debate it on Thursday afternoon, but the government and the opposition—but particularly the government—know that they always speak out bills on a Thursday afternoon. We never get to vote on the bills. They just keep them there on the Notice Paper and they never get finally dealt with. That is why we needed to suspend standing orders and bring this bill in and give it precedence. That way we could have a proper debate. We could make it short and sharp. We know Australians support this. We know it makes sense. We could have a debate about it. We could then have a vote on it. But if we were left to deal with this on Thursday afternoon in general business, in the limited time we get to debate, they would talk it out and we would never get to vote on it. That is why we need to bring it on now. If the government were prepared to deal with these private senators’ bills properly then we would not need to seek precedence to debate this sort of bill. That is why, Minister, we bring it on now—so that we can actually deal with this properly instead of it being shuffled off to Thursday.

This government is not serious about dealing with whaling. Just yesterday a small group of the International Whaling Commission released its report that effectively will commercialise whaling. And, just by chance, the Prime Minister has said he is going to take legal action in November. Knowing full well that this report would basically allow commercial whaling, he says, ‘Oh, well, we are going to take legal action in November.’ This will not be dealt with before the next whaling season—so that will be another whaling season, another nearly 1,000 whales taken and slaughtered. Not only that, he knows the rules might change so he might not even be able to take legal action at that stage. His government are basically now talking to other governments about trying to commercialise whaling. How disingenuous is that! They will not support changing this bill. They are working with other governments to effectively commercialise whaling. They are not taking legal action until it is too late and another 1,000 whales are killed.

That is why this issue is urgent. That is what Australian people are also saying. In an online survey that we did, in just a few days we got 3,500 signatures supporting our stance on this. It is a simple amendment. If the government and the opposition were dinkum about ensuring that Australian services and resources do not support whaling in our Southern Ocean, they would support this. So instead of having to have this debate about precedence, we could actually have a debate about the issue. (Time expired)