Dissenting Report

The Australian Greens

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Prohibition of Support for Whaling) Bill 2010 seeks to address a gap in Australia's regulation of whaling. The bill prohibits support being provided to persons engaged in whaling activities.

As outlined in the majority report the current Australian law prohibits killing, injuring or interfering with a cetacean. These provisions essentially amount to a ban on whaling. However, there is no specific offence of offering support to persons engaged in whaling.

Many Australians were rightly appalled when Australian air services were used to assist whaling operations in 2009-2010. The exposure of this event highlighted the gap in the Commonwealth's regulation of whaling activities.

The submissions to the Inquiry have brought to our attention some unintended consequences in the current drafting of the bill. In particular we note the submission from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority indicated its concern that its statutory functions could be caught by the bill. It was not the intention of the bill to catch activities of organisations like AMSA relating to radio communication services, navigation warnings or meteorological warnings. We agree that statutory functions of government agencies should be exempt from the offence created by the bill.

However, the Australian Greens remain committed to ensuring a more complete prohibition of any involvement in whaling activities and urge support for the bill in creating a specific offence of providing services, support or resources to persons engaged whaling activities. We strongly believe the offence must be sufficiently broad to capture actions that assist in the harming or killing of whales or assist persons who intend to harm or kill whales.

The Australian Greens welcome this government's commitment to prohibiting whaling, including its initiation of legal action in the International Court of Justice against Japanese scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean. The Greens have called for such legal action to be taken for a number of years. Alongside this action, the government should also ensure our laws are robust in preventing any assistance to whaling as well as prohibiting whaling itself.  We recommend the bill be supported. 

Recommendation 1:           That the bill be amended to exempt Commonwealth and State Government agencies undertaking their statutory functions.

Recommendation 2:           That the bill as amended be supported.

Senator Rachel Siewert

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