Senator O’BRIEN (2:10 PM) —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:

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?

Senator IAN CAMPBELL (Minister for the Environment and Heritage) —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)

Senator O’BRIEN —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?

Senator IAN CAMPBELL (Minister for the Environment and Heritage) —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)