Mr RUDD (6:36 PM) —Members may be aware that on 2 June 2005 a pod of 60 whales beached themselves near Busselton in Western Australia. This incident prompted an extraordinary reaction from Australians from every walk of life. Over 1,500 locals donned their wetsuits and waded into the shallows to help rescue these stranded whales. Their efforts were rewarded with the successful return of the bulk of that pod to the open sea.

This incident demonstrates the deep respect and affection which the Australian people have for these giants of the deep. Furthermore, it demonstrates the strong public interest in Australia in the conservation of the species. So it is worth taking this opportunity to reflect on what steps our fearless foreign minister has taken to protect these creatures. It is particularly timely to do so today, the first day of the 2005 annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Ulsan in South Korea.

Regrettably, our foreign minister has been missing in action on this issue. We have seen a flurry of activity from the environment minister, Senator Campbell, over the last six weeks or so, largely I suspect in response to prompting from those of us on this side of the House and from those in the media. But we fear that this may prove to be an inadequate response if what we are concerned about is the ending of Japan’s abuse of the practice of so-called whaling for scientific purposes.

Japan of course has made no secret of its whaling ambitions. Since the commercial whaling ban was first introduced in 1986, Japan has been building up its support base within the International Whaling Commission, and its efforts have hardly gone unnoticed. At every IWC meeting since 1986 Japan has proposed a motion to allow it to hunt whales commercially in the Pacific. Over the years the balance of support on this matter within the IWC has gradually changed from a majority in favour of keeping the ban to an approximate fifty-fifty split.

Today, on this first day of the 2005 IWC meeting, we will see whether Japan has finally been able to stack out this meeting. Voting on procedural motions today should begin to reveal the final balance between the pro- and anti-whaling lobbies of the IWC. Japan may be getting very close to achieving a majority vote in support of a resumption of commercial whaling. But our concern, whether or not that occurs, is with what happens about Japan’s continued abuse of so-called scientific whaling in general.

Under the IWC rules, a change to the moratorium on commercial whaling requires a 75 per cent majority of the meeting. The political reality is that a simple majority vote in favour of commercial whaling would be a serious setback for those wanting to bring an end to the slaughter of these magnificent beasts. Japanese whaling ambitions and its efforts to increase its influence on the IWC are of course not new. These have been looming for years. This is therefore a matter on which the government should have been working for years, just as the government of Japan has been working for years on this matter—not just for the past six weeks, when it became a public item of media attention.

So today, on the day when the balance at the IWC is at risk of tipping in favour of the pro-whaling lobby for the first time or at least getting close to that, the question must be asked: what has the government done to counteract the influence of Japan and other pro-whaling countries on the IWC over the past few years? We are in the ridiculous situation where neighbours and good friends of Australia such as Kiribati, the Solomons, Tuvalu and now, as we discovered over the weekend, Nauru may well have joined Japan in the IWC to support the lifting of the commercial whaling ban. If that occurs—and it is still a big ‘if’, because we do not know the outcome of the vote—it would be a most disturbing development in terms of the effectiveness of Australian diplomacy in the south-west Pacific. With Nauru’s overnight announcement that it would be joining the IWC as part of the pro-whaling lobby, questions must be asked about the effectiveness of, in particular, Australia’s diplomatic efforts with that country. (Time expired)