BACK in 2007, Kevin Rudd said that if we elected him as prime minister, he would stop the slaughter of whales.
And it wasn’t just earnest young lefties who took off their Save the Whales T-shirts and replaced them for a time with a red, white and blue Kevin 07 design.
No, Mr Rudd’s pledge to end ``commercial’’ whaling appealed across the political spectrum, young and old, progressive, conservative, as advancing technology meant Australians were bombarded with real-time images of dying whales writhing in agony as they were hauled at the end of a harpoon line through blood-stained seas.
And he was pretty clear about it too, our prime ministerial hopeful.
``Take Japan to international courts such as the Court of Justice or to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to end the slaughter of whales,’’ he pledged in a statement with former environment spokesman Anthony Albanese - prior to the 2007 federal election.
That was then. Now, it seems Australia can’t do enough for the Japanese Government.
Soon after being elected, Mr Rudd bowed to political pragmatism and announced that he and the Japanese had ``agreed to disagree’’ on the issue of whaling.
This smoothed the choppy waters of international diplomacy, as Japan was feeling very much the third wheel in Mr Rudd’s love affair with China.
But it created a serious political problem at home - a problem made worse by the co-operation of our federal agencies.
The Australian Federal Police raided protest ships when they docked for refuelling in Hobart last summer after a complaint from the Japanese embassy.
This year, our airports played host to Japanese spy planes, which were dispatched to track the protest ships.
And our federal immigration department cracked down on the leader of the international whaling protest fleet, Captain Paul Watson, putting him on a tighter visa restrictions.
Fair shake of the soy sauce bottle, Mr Rudd.
Whose side are you on?
The Japanese call their annual slaughter of about 1000 whales in Antarctic waters a cull for `scientific’’ purposes.
Australia’s description is politely vague - our Government calls it ``commercial whaling’‘.
But let’s be honest, this is fishing - albeit it on a grand scale - with whale meat destined for Japanese dinner tables. A super-sized, high-stakes equivalent of pulling in a few flatties from the bay to cook on the barbie that night, using harpoons and satellite tracking equipment instead of a handline and few bits of bacon for bait.
On a trip to Japan in 2007, I saw whale meat for sale in the Tokyo fish market, and photographed it before being chased away by a stall-holder well aware of western sensitivities to eating whale meat.
This is a cultural clash. Westerners love whales. We give them names and make movies about them (think Free Willy).
We record their sounds and produce boring CDs of whale music to listen to - and people actually buy them.
The Japanese, and other whaling countries such as Norway and Iceland love them, too.
They love to eat them and don’t see why this tradition should be stopped by the sensitivities of predominantly western nations.
It’s almost the equivalent of the outrage Australia generates when we shoot and eat kangaroos.
But there’s a significant difference: kangaroos are in plague proportion and need to be culled.
Whales are recognised by almost every country on earth as being endangered and in need of protection.
From a more hard-headed view-point, the protest fleet, run by the Sea Shepherd organisation, has won the public relations battle over whaling hands-down.
For six years, this group of committed environmentalists has taken to the southern ocean every summer in a collection of futuristic-looking boats which look to have come straight from a movie set.
The Ady Gil, wrecked last week in a collision with a Japanese whaler, was a $1.5 million hi-tech trimaran that looked like something Batman and Robin would have deployed. Pow! Great pictures, guaranteed front-page coverage.
Yet another point scored by Sea Shepherd in the public relations war.
Young, passionate and technology-savvy, these extreme environmentalists have made sure the world knows exactly what is happening more than 1000km south of Tasmania.
This year the Japanese have given themselves a permit to take (let’s be honest: kill) 935 minke whales and 50 larger whales.
Mr Rudd could make himself an international hero - simply by keeping his promise.
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