Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

My question is also to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. I draw the minister back to his comments of 22 June last year, at the end of the International Whaling Commission meeting, when he said:

Australia and pro-conservation nations have today won a massive victory for whale conservation. This is a fantastic outcome because it reinforces Australia’s determination to ensure all commercial and so-called ‘scientific’ whaling is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Didn’t Japan win more votes than ever at this year’s IWC meeting? Won’t Japan slaughter more whales this year than ever before? Doesn’t this mean that the minister’s sole focus on trying to end the whale slaughter through the IWC has totally failed? Since claiming a ‘massive victory’ and asserting that scientific whaling has been consigned to ‘the dustbin of history’ in 2005, can the minister indicate how many whales he thinks the Howard government has saved?