The Rudd Government has today been exposed as being involved in a secret plan to give Japan the green light to carry out more whaling.
The Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water, Greg Hunt, said the Government had been caught holding secret talks for the re-introduction of commercial whaling.
The Federal Government has helped draw up a secret deal to break the whaling deadlock by letting Japan kill more whales in the North Pacific in return for killing fewer in the Southern Ocean.
Japanese whalers could hunt a regulated number of minke whales in its coastal waters, and take many more whales in the North Pacific, under the plan.
In exchange Japan would agree to one of two offers: either to phase out scientific whaling in the Antarctic entirely, or to impose an annual Southern Ocean limit.
The proposal was hammered out in secret by an International Whaling Commission drafting group of six nations, which includes Australia and Japan, at a meeting in Britain last month.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare said Australia had become part of a dangerous drift towards commercial whaling in the 21st century.
We the undersigned ask that Kevin Rudd honours his whaling policy which put in place in 2007.
If Kevin Rudd allows Japan to increase their whaling the undersigned believe it is a betrayal of the Australian people, a broken election promise and a in-humane act of animal cruelty.
The undersigned strongly oppose whaling in any nations water or any ocean and expect our government to support its people.
