We’ve had some polling done, and the results should really be a wake-up call for the Government on whaling.
Polling indicated that there is very strong public support for the Australian Government to take international legal action to try and stop the Japanese whaling program (87%), even if it means compromising our relationship with Japan (91%).
The community also clearly believe that Environment Minister Peter Garrett is not doing enough with 71% believing the Minister has not done enough to stop the slaughter.
With these figures, you’d think the Government should be more willing to take action against whaling. With the Prime Minister’s recent trip to Japan, there was no serious commitment to fight whaling through the international legal system, nor any talk of refusing to progress a free trade agreement with Japan until it stops killing whales.
The Prime Minister instead has stated that the whaling dispute was “a disagreement among friends” in a relationship “based on strategic security and economic partnership and on an enduring friendship”.
Polling was undertaken by Essential Media Communications (EMC) June, 2008
Tim, or anyone else knowledgeable:
What is a dispassionate and unbiased guesstimate as to the probability of success or failure of such an action?
What is the approximate cost of such an action in monetary terms?
What is the length of time such an action is likely to take?
Can we see the questions as asked by EMC please?
Thanks in advance.
As someone who eats whales, I may be regarded as having a bias in a certain direction.
However let me say that I think Australia is guaranteed to win a court case against Japan.
Japan says that it samples whales for the purpose of collecting biological data for use in, amongst other things, studies of whale population dynamics which will help inform us better about sustainable limits for whaling.
But Australia can easily disprove this. There is whale meat on sale in Japan, most of it coming from these research programmes. Japan is even importing whale meat from Iceland and Norway now. So, it can be proved in an international court beyond doubt that Japan’s research whaling programme is in fact illegal, and the real purpose of it is not to obtain biological information for use in whale stock assessments, but to obtain whale meat for eating.
There is probably nothing the Japanese whalers fear more than being taken to court by Australia.
I can’t see any progress with the diplomatic solution being made after 20 years of arguing about it so far, so now is definitely the time for the Australian government to take this to court.
The Australian government must be pressured harder to advance this international court case, making full use of the huge amount of very convincing evidence gathered by the customs vessel in the Southern Ocean earlier this year.
mcfarm, I’ll have to get back to on the other questions, but the poll by EMC used the following questions:
Q: There is ongoing controversy about the Japanese whaling program in the Antarctic waters south of the Australian coast. Do you believe the Australian Government should take international legal action to try and stop the Japanese whaling program?
Response: 87% Yes.
Q: If answered yes; do you believe the Australian Government should take international legal action even if it means compromising our relationship with Japan?
Response: 91% Yes.
Q: Do you think Environment Minister Peter Garrett is doing a good job in his efforts to stop the Japanese whaling program?
Response: 71% No.
To give an indication of the likelihood of a successful legal case against Japanese whaling, have a read over the Human Society International’s case in the Federal Court earlier this year.
Tim,
Does HSI’s case in the Federal court have anything to do with the case that Australia should put to an international court?
Thanks Tim.
It is not surprising that HSI were successful in an Australian court enforcing an Australian construct (the whale sanctuary).
If the Japanese whalers were caught red handed (literally) in our EEZ they will lose the case, no question. However killing whales in ‘our’ whale sanctuary may be a different story, if the sanctuary is not universally accepted/ratified by some international body that Japan also recognises.
I really don’t want to us pursue this only to find it thrown out after much delay and cost due to international legal meanderings and ambiguities. I would like to see a synopsis of the positions and the probability of success aired first.
Gunnar, I doubt the Japanese whalers fear us at all, they will hide behind their Government and this will become Australia vs Japan, and not Australia vs the whalers. As a matter of face saving the Japanese will dig deep into public pockets and fight this to the bitter end.
As I see it, this proposed action will not end whaling by the Japanese, it only has the potential to end it in areas Australia feels it has an enforceable legal interest. So the same whales will be killed, just not where we have ‘control’. This is a bit like our ‘tactical control’ in areas of Afghanistan me thinks.
mcfarm,
The Australian sanctuary, as you note, is of no relevance to the question of an international court case. I suppose there is technically nothing stopping Australia designating a whale sanctuary in Timbuktu if it wanted to. This Australian sanctuary, as I understand it, is only about 10 years old and seems to have been created in a fit of ‘gesture politics’ by your previous administration in response to ongoing whaling activity in the Southern Ocean. I don’t think any of the nations that were engaged in whaling in the Southern Ocean ever asked Australia’s permission to do so, so frankly to a non-Australian like myself it really just seems ridiculous.
On the other hand, Japan is, like most whale eating nations, adhered to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. The IWC in 1994 established a “Southern Ocean Sanctuary” (including waters which Australia has a claim to, no complaints from Australia about that then either). However, there are two hurdles for pushing this case.
1) ICRW rules permit signatory nations to lodge official objections to any rules (including the establishment of sanctuaries) which they do not like, effectively meaning they are not legally bound by the decision. Japan lodged just such an objection with respect to the Southern Ocean Sanctuary with regards to the Antarctic minke whale.
2) Irrespective of a signatory nation having lodged an objection to a measure such as sanctuaries, special permit whaling is exempt from such provisions, anyway. The rules of the ICRW essentially say the rules may not serve to restrain any nation from taking whales for scientific purposes. The same also applies to the older “moratorium” measure, which is basically a global sanctuary, with the Southern Ocean Sanctuary just duplicating the effectiveness of the moratorium measure for, probably, only political purposes.
Japan, of it’s own making, remains bound to the moratorium and bound to the Southern Ocean Sanctuary except with regard to minke whales, so may not legally permit commercial whaling operations.
But it does permit what it claims are special permit scientific whaling operations.
So, the key to winning the case seems to be in proving that what Japan is permitting is not special permit scientific whaling, but commercial whaling in the guise of special permit scientific whaling. By proving this, Australia would then be able to show that Japan is thus in violation of the moratorium, and the southern ocean sanctuary with respect to fin whales at least, of which it has killed a dozen or so in the last 3 years.
Of course, it seems like everyone in Australia knows that Japan is definitely breaking the rules, so this should be very easy to prove. Australia should start advancing the case as soon as possible.
I disagree that the proposed action would be limited in effect to areas Australia feels it has an enforceable legal interest. If Australia proves that all of Japan’s special permit scientific whaling programmes are in fact all commercial whaling programmes, then this should effectively ban Japan from catching whales in the North Pacific as well as in the Southern Ocean. This is because Japan has lodged no objection to the moratorium, to which it is legally bound, and why it isn’t issuing commercial whaling permits like Iceland and Norway.
Of course, such a case against Japan won’t be able to prevent Iceland and Norway from catching whales and exporting the products to Japan for a profit, so perhaps this is something that Australia wants to take into consideration as well. There’s nothing to stop Iceland and Norway from issuing commercial whaling permits in the Southern Ocean right now, so perhaps they would start if a Japanese whaling company were to legally rebase itself in the North Atlantic and paid the Icelandic / Norwegian government a hefty licensing fee.
These figures are really stating the bleeding obvious. Australia has turned a corner in relation to this issue and Australians are looking for leadership on the issue. It has gone beyond a joke.
Peter Garrett has been sidelined he is so far off being in a rubber raft with Bob Brown these days he is a chapter behind what Australians really think and feel about whaling. Lets hope the Greens can change something. Australia has been involved in the IWC and nothing changed, enquiries and committees are doing nothing to save these great mammals of the sea.
The sea shephard is the only group as well as Greenpeace that is actually doing something. Rudd needs to pull his socks up.
Public concern about whaling?
Poll the same people about live export, factory farming and shark-finning: find out what hypocrites they are.
“Poll the same people about live export, factory farming and shark-finning: find out what hypocrites they are.”
Especially with Queensland considering shark finning permits fort the Great Barrier Reef. I guess the govt saw the Asian mafia making so much money that they decided they wanted in on the action.
Maybe Garrett can start importing Japanese whale meat and complete the circle of bullshit.
While I agree completely that the whaling issue is a joke (Crikey mentioned a few days ago the actual research that has been conducted by the Japanese over the last 18 years - more than 7000 minkes killed; 43 research papers published), and I would appreciate it if our new PM showed a little backbone, Peter Singer published an article in The Age (originally in The Guardian) not too long ago that pointed out the West’s great hypocrisy, summed up fairly succinctly by the final two paragraphs:
The joke is “one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The word poison btw came from the French word for fish.
Anyway, hypocrites are everywhere, just ask Peter Singer about his public stance on euthanasia , and then ask him what he does for his own mother. I presume this puts him in a weak position regarding his pro euthanasia stance? Even ethicists are prone to the ‘do as I say but not as I do’ syndrome.
So it is simply this: two wrongs don’t make a right, it just makes it harder for one to claim the moral high ground. It is for this reason the court action will probably proceed. The court action will be about the law, and the ethics and morals irrelevant. Which is why I would like to see an outcome probability analysis/synopsis of the proposed action.
Gunnar, an unrepentant whale eater, is probably closer to the mark than the whale savers at this point in time.
To Gunnar,
Whale meat taken from the Japanese Scientific Whaling Program is indeed sold in Japan. I do not think that neccessarily proves that Scientific Whaling is Commercial Whaling in disguise. The IWC regulations require that all whales taken for research be utilized and not wasted. I do not think the IWC outright forbids the sale of whale meat taken for research.
However,the Japanese are in a ‘damned if they do and damned if they don’t’ situation. They are required to not waste the whale meat. If they use it for school lunch programs, they are accused of trying to convert children into ‘Evil whale eaters’. If they sell it,to recoup some of the money spent on whaling, they are accused of commercial whaling in disguise.
From my understanding the Japanese were strong-armed into agreeing with the moritorium in the first place. The U.S. made a deal with them that they could fish in Alaskan waters if they voted for the ban. Of course, afterwards the U.S. excluded all foreign vessels from fishing in U.S. waters,anyway. The term ‘Indian-giver’ comes to mind.
All things considered. There are for more important and more damaging activities being carried out by other nations and this issue does not warrant all the attention and effort that it is getting. From my understanding China is an enviormentalists nightmare.
China and whaling in the same post, now there’s a horrible thought. Imagine if the Chinese develop a taste for whale meat, the whales would have about the same prospects of survival as Tibet………………
To Mcfarm,
Hmmmmm…………..I can’t say I disagree with that thought.
The only thing we can do now is to raise awareness (global). It’s only in this blog that I found out the Japanese are into whaling. I only saw them butchering dolphins. Collect videos of these and generate an angry mob. Information is power.
From the Sydney Morning Herald today: