Labour backs conservation groups’ petition

Chris Carter today affirmed Labour’s support for the more than 50,000 people who signed a petition opposing resumption of any commercial whaling, and pledged that Labour would never agree to any resumption of commercial whaling.

Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson was speaking on Parliament’s forecourt, where leading conservation NGOs Forest and Bird, Project Jonah, Greenpeace and WSPA (the World Society for the Protection of Animals), as well as Whale Watch Kaikoura, a successful ecotourism business, had gathered to present their petition. Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully refused to come to the forecourt to accept the petition.

Mr Carter said it was a disgrace that, under National, New Zealand has moved from being one of the staunchest conservation minded countries to one which was fast creating an impression of confusion and double speak around conservation issues generally, and whaling in particular.

“So far Foreign Minister McCully and Prime Minister John Key have managed to both confirm and deny that New Zealand will support the International Whaling Commission (IWC) proposal allowing Japan a return to limited commercial whaling,” Mr Carter said.

“We heard yesterday that New Zealand may or may not join Australia in taking a case to the international Court of Justice to stop Japan’s abuse of the scientific loophole in current IWC rules. This twisting of the rules has allowed Japan to harvest thousands of whales in the Southern Ocean in the name of (very dubious) scientific research.

“It would appear that it has been impossible to get a clear position from either Key or McCully on New Zealand’s stance on either the return of commercial whaling, or on joining the Australian court action.”

Chris Carter reminded the conservationist groups that any international court action can have positive outcomes.

New Zealand and Australia jointly took France to court over the French nuclear testing programme in French Polynesia and, although we lost that case, the resulting bad publicity ultimately forced France to abandon its nuclear programme in the Pacific. Mr Carter suggested that even if the court action was unsuccessful Japan could decide that its widely condemned whaling programme was equally offside with most of the rest of the world and, like the French, abandon an unpopular policy.

ENDS

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