Charter of planes to tail anti-whaling ships exposes Labor vulnerability

The two aircraft charted by a New Zealand public relations company to keep watch on anti-whaling protest ships in the Southern Ocean have exposed another of the Australian Government's vulnerable spots as it prepares for this year's election.

The planes were reportedly hired by Wellington-based public relations company Omeka Communications - whose clients include Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research - to track the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin as it sailed to intercept the annual Japanese whale hunt.

Sea Shepherd claims the flights were organised to enable the Japanese fleet to evade the approaching protesters.

The news that local aircraft were flying from Australian airports in support of the whalers sparked outrage among conservationists and rival political parties, fuelling anger at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's failure to meet election promises to take Japan to the International Court of Justice.

It follows the debacle over Rudd's key climate change policy, the watered-down greenhouse emissions trading scheme that has been blocked in the Senate by opponents including the Greens.

Rudd has also failed to deliver on his pledge to take over the nation's ailing public hospitals if the states could not meet new performance requirements, and has stepped back from another promise to place strict controls on salaries and payouts to company executives.

Now the Government is coming under renewed attack over its whaling policy. Sea Shepherd has had three vessels in the Southern Ocean, the Steve Irwin, Ady Gil and the new Bob Barker, a 1200 tonne converted Norwegian whaler, bought with a US$5 million ($6.8 million) donation from US television personality Bob Barker.

The organisation demanded the Government end the whalers' surveillance flights, which it said aided the Japanese to poach from Australian waters.

The Coalition's environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, said the use of Australian aircraft and airports to support whaling was outrageous.

Greens Leader Bob Brown said he intended to introduce a bill outlawing any sort of aid to whaling when the Senate resumes next month. He said the bill would include air or sea surveillance and communications facilities.

Under existing laws the Government has no power to block surveillance flights. Australian National University international law expert Professor Don Rothwell said Omeka Communications and the operators of the charter aircraft involved had not broken Australian law.

"The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which is the relevant Commonwealth legislation dealing with whaling and establishes the Australian Whale Sanctuary, does not seek to cover activities in the air other than the possibility of whale watching - and there is nothing to suggest this was being conducted in this instance," he said.

"Therefore, even if it is argued that these flights were being conducted in support of the successful undertaking of the Japanese research whaling programme ... there is nothing in the act which would prohibit such an activity."

But the flights have focussed attention again on the Government's anti-whaling policies and its failure to live up to its strong election promises.

Rudd did appoint a special envoy on whaling, sent the customs ship Ocean Viking to the Southern Ocean to collect evidence for possible legal action, and boosted its diplomacy through the International Whaling Commission.

But it has yet to match with action its campaign rhetoric, including a joint 2007 statement by Rudd and [now] Environment Minister Peter Garrett promising that a Labor Government would "initiate legal action in the international courts to stop the slaughter".