Japanese Whaling

Update - 9.15am Tuesday, January 10: It’s being reported the Australian Government will dispatch the Customs vessel Ocean Protector to collect the three activists, after Japanese authorities agreed to hand them back without charge.

Three men board a foreign ship in the dead of night, outside Australian waters, without permission. The crew of the target ship refuses their demands, and sets course for the ocean blue. And now it’s our Attorney-General’s job to fix it.

According to the A-G Nicola Roxon, all options are on the table at present, including sending a vessel out to meet the Shonan Maru No.2 and collect WA men Glen Pendlebury, Geoffrey Tuxworth and Simon Peterffy. She’s even been asked if the Navy should be mobilised.

This in spite of the bleeding obvious, that Roxon pointed out: “We do need to explain to the public that although we do not support Japanese whaling, if people take action outside our territorial waters, Australian laws will not automatically apply and that does restrict some of the options that the Government can take.”

Continue reading "Are these men our problem?" »

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.

Continue reading "If Rudd kept his promise we wouldn’t need Sea Shepherd" »

Do you reckon if Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson was roaming the streets of Melbourne in a high-tech armoured car deliberately provoking drug dealers and putting his young acolytes in harm’s way he’d be welcomed on to the national broadcaster to tout his particular brand of vigilantism? I doubt it.

We’re not big on vigilantes in this nation, which has an imperfect but workable system of the rule of law, enforced by publicly funded police. Yet for some reason the ridiculous antics currently under way off the tip of Antarctica are allowed to carry on unchecked, and have prompted a frenzy of boys-own-adventure cheering here at home.

Whomever is ultimately responsible for the sinking of the Ady Gil yesterday afternoon, it was highly irresponsible of the Sea Shepherd organisation to put the crew in such danger. But there was Mr Watson on the ABC this morning being hailed a hero for protecting the whales from the Japanese factory ships. He was also on Macquarie Radio, no doubt Fairfax radio, most TV stations and in every newspaper.

Continue reading "Sea Shepherd is going to get someone killed" »