Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Will the minister inform the Senate of his recent efforts to advance the protection of whales and other marine animals? Further, will the minister respond to other outcomes from the recent international meeting?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Payne for a question which I know is of great interest to most Australians. The Australian delegation and, in fact, the coalition that we have helped to form with a number of other pro conservation nations, achieved some important outcomes at a conference that could well have gone the wrong way. The Japanese—and their pro-whaling friends in Norway, Iceland and some other places: 27 other countries including Nauru—have been, it is obvious, aggressively recruiting, really since the moratorium came into force 20 years ago, with a view to returning the world to the disastrous days prior to the moratorium, when commercial whaling saw the destruction of nearly the entire humpback whale population on the earth, the entire fin whale population on the earth, and the entire blue whale population on the earth, not to mention some other lesser known species. Blue whales have not recovered as a result of the moratorium. They are still at perilously low levels. Fin whales have only just started recovering, and are still listed as an endangered and vulnerable species. Humpbacks, even with 20 years of no hunting, are still listed as a species that is at risk.

The achievements were in fact to defeat the whalers on four crucial and substantial votes. Japan moved to ensure that all votes at the commission would be held in private, which would of course reduce accountability back to their nations of those who choose to vote in favour of whaling. They tried to get rid of the Southern Ocean sanctuary, a sanctuary that was put in place just at the end of the last century. They tried to introduce commercial whaling off the coast of Japan and failed to do that. They also tried to remove any items to do with small whales and small dolphins from the agenda of the commission.

All of those votes were won for a couple of reasons—firstly, because we have been able to create this global coalition of countries for conservation. That has taken a lot of very hard work by not only the Australian government and the Foreign Affairs officials from Australia but also core like-minded friends: the United States; Great Britain, headed up by their minister Ben Bradshaw; New Zealand and their minister Chris Carter; the Brazilians; and the South Africans—a group of countries working together. That group stayed stronger than ever before. We also got some key abstentions on some key motions from countries like Kiribati and the Solomons. We saw one country, Belize, switching sides. And of course we saw, for example, Israel, a new conservation nation, joining the commission. All of those factors brought it together. We did see Japan, in an act of desperation, move a pious motion, as we would call it here in the Senate—basically a motion that is nonbinding—on the last day, criticising the moratorium. That highlights the risks that are ahead of us.

The only disappointing note for the delegation over there, which included NGOs like Project Jonah and the Humane Society, was the incessant carping and whining from the Labor Party opposition spokesman and Senator Brown back here. It is sad when you have a bunch of Aussies on the other side of the world working hard with other countries to try to maintain the moratorium on whaling that you get this constant carping. I notice that Senator Brown in this place actually suggested that we use Japan’s tactics in relation to Nauru and other Pacific nations to win their vote. Australia will never link its aid to votes in these sorts of bodies, and Senator Brown and the Labor Party should be entirely ashamed of themselves.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, the minister has just misrepresented me, so I will take the opportunity to correct the record about his failure at the end of question time, unless you would like me to do it now.

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are stating that you have been misrepresented, are you?

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, the minister has misrepresented me.

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is another time when you can deal with that matter.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Link to 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?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think Australia can do this historic work of keeping the moratorium in place by itself. We know it cannot do that. It can do it, as we have shown successfully in the last two years, by building up the pro-conservation vote and getting the countries that have a like mind to Australia to work together. They are now doing that in a way that has not occurred since prior to the moratorium coming into force, which I remind Labor Party senators—in fact, all senators—was a historic change of policy put in place by Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal government. It has been a bipartisan policy ever since. It is really only under the Beazley Labor policy desperation that you see this sort of carping and whining and undermining of the Australian position—a virtually unheard-of undermining of Australia’s position—while, as I say, we have a dedicated Australian delegation, including people like Nicola Beynon from the Humane Society, representatives from Project Jonah and dedicated officials from Foreign Affairs and my own department, working with like-minded countries from around the world. And yet we get this constant carping and whingeing.

I really need to focus on this constant red herring that Labor, and I think sometimes others, introduce that there is some silver bullet in legal action. I did take the opportunity in St Kitts to meet with Minister Carter from New Zealand and Minister Bradshaw from Great Britain, as well as Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who was a former Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand and who has been an IWC commissioner for many years since, as well as a member of international courts and a distinguished international lawyer in his own right. Each one of those distinguished people, who I suspect know a lot more about the legal side of the Whaling Commission than either the senator who asked the question or the Labor Party spokesman, has reached the conclusion that legal action is entirely unlikely to be successful.

That was reinforced when I discussed it with and in fact read a book written by Professor Alexander Gillespie from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, who was at the conference as part of the Kiwi delegation, who reaches the same conclusion. I would be happy to refer anyone who thinks that there is a silver bullet in taking legal action to that. The reality is that keeping the moratorium in place and keeping a strong group of like-minded countries and maintaining a majority at the International Whaling Commission has ensured that tens of thousands of whales have been saved. If the moratorium fails or if it is unwound, that will see thousands of whales beginning to be slaughtered again.

On the issue of scientific whaling, we have made it quite clear as a government that using the scientific provisions as an excuse for commercial whaling—which is done by both Iceland and Japan; Norway does only commercial whaling—is an abuse. It really is something that needs to be brought to an end. We know that working in the whaling commission is the only practical place to achieve that.

We need to turn to what the Labor Party did when they were in this situation. The last time there was an increase in the whale intake under the scientific provision was when the Labor Party was in power. They did not take legal action. They received the same advice that we did. They also did nothing in terms of the diplomacy side. On not one single IWC mission did Labor send a minister, nor did they take international concerted action in creating a cooperative body. The Labor Party really have a shameful record in this regard. (Time expired)

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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I note the minister chose not to answer the part of the question that went to whether Japan would slaughter more whales this year than ever before, and I invite him to address that part of the question. I would also like the minister to explain why none of the Pacific nations he visited prior to the 2006 meeting joined with Australia in voting against Japan last week. Doesn’t this demonstrate that the minister’s overblown rhetoric and abuse of opponents has proven to be a diplomatic disaster in our own region?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems that the Labor Party cannot even understand what occured. It has been well covered in the newspapers. The reality is that Kiribati and the Solomons both abstained on the key votes. That is a great achievement from countries that have very close relationships with Japan and have traditionally always supported Japan. Abstentions, even if Senator O’Brien cannot understand it, are incredibly important when you are down to those sorts of votes.

The reality is that the only country that did not help in some way in relation to our efforts at the IWC this week was in fact the Marshall Islands. They did say that they would keep an open mind about it. I have said that it did not seem to me, from the way they voted, that they did have an open mind. But I do not browbeat these countries. I will keep working with Nauru, for example. We had a very good meeting with Pacific island countries, hosted by Australia and New Zealand. We will keep working with them. That is what you have to do if you want to win this fight. (Time expired)