Government Backs Whaling Case

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday December 14, 2007

Andrew Darby in Hobart

THE Federal Government has decided to back a long-running legal case against the Japanese whale hunt in Australian Antarctic waters.

The decision overturns the opposition of the previous government to the case, in which the Humane Society International is calling on the Federal Court to act against a Japanese whaling company, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha.

And the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has confirmed that the Government is developing plans to monitor Japanese whaling so it can mount international legal action over the controversial Antarctic hunt.

The previous government told the Federal Court the Humane Society's legal action could affect relations with Japan, and was likely to prompt an adverse response from member countries of the Antarctic Treaty. Australia's claim to the Antarctic territory is recognised by few other countries.

At its first meeting, the Rudd cabinet decided to request that the judge hearing the case, Justice James Allsop, determine it on its legal merits, the Herald has been told.

The Humane Society is arguing that Japan's official reports to the International Whaling Commission show it has killed hundreds of whales in waters off the coast of the Australian Antarctic Territory designated an Australian whale sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Mr Rudd said the Government was considering the best way to collect data that would help in any future legal case against the Japanese fleet. But with whaling, including a "research" kill of humpback whales that migrate along the Australian coast, due to begin soon, anti-whaling groups called for urgent diplomatic action.

The Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, and the Attorney- General, Robert McClelland, have been taking advice on how to deal with the whalers. The fleet operates in polar waters, where distance and ice restrict options for the RAAF's long-range Orion aircraft and the navy's frigates.

However, an Australian fisheries patrol vessel, Oceanic Viking, is ice-strengthened, and its crew is equipped and trained to operate in polar waters.

Speaking to reporters in Bali, Mr Rudd said the Government took seriously Australia's international obligations for the proper protection of whales.

"We have said in the past that we would look at measures which would fortify any future case to be brought before international tribunals on the implementation of Japan's whaling policy, in particular Japan's assertion that these are for research purposes, not commercial purposes," he said.

The anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, warned that the Japanese fleet "are about to start harpooning the whales, if they haven't already".

"If the Rudd Government is serious about this, it's actually going to have to do much more than take films of the whalers," he said from his ship the Steve Irwin, which is searching for the fleet.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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