Party politics will kill any solutions to whaling

And so the whaling debate between Australia and Japan continues.

Japan continues to hunt whales and Australia continues to talk about trying to stop them. Lots of talk but nothing beyond that.

Joe Hockey has come out firing, claiming the Rudd government does not know how to stop the Japanese whaling. Now hold on there Joe - while Kevin Anderson succeeded in getting matters on the table before the International Whaling Commission, the Howard government didn't seem to have much success in stopping them either, did you?

The Greens have criticised the Rudd government for failing to back the proposed laws to ban Australian businesses from supplying aeroplanes in support of Japanese whaling. The government has taken advice that the proposed laws may be unconsititional. The complaints by the Greens have some standing. The complaints by the Opposition however seem nothing more than the standard objections - the government says 'this', so we must therefore say 'that'.

Japanese authorities finally made a statement that strongly implied that the real reason for their whaling is just what everyone else already knows it is about - meat for the table and not a damned thing to do with 'scientific research'. How about they take a leaf out of the book the Chinese are using - and start eating our damned Cane Toads.

I doubt anyone can argue that Australian society as a whole is opposed to continued whaling. Just this once, just once, can't we get a bipartisan approach that gets above party politics and take some real action? It greatly saddens me that the answer is almost certainly no. And the gentle giants of the deep will continue to be slaughtered in our southern oceans.