The all-too-brief New Year polling respite has come to an end with the first Morgan face-to-face poll of the year, covering a sample of 934 from the regular weekend survey. It records only minor shifts on the last poll of last year, which combined the results of the weekends of December 10/11 and 17/18: Labor up half a point to 37 per cent, the Coalition up two to 45 per cent and the Greens down 2.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent. Where Labor achieved parity on the previous-election preference method in the last poll, this time the Coalition leads 51.5-48.5. When respondents were asked how they would direct their preferences, the Coalition’s lead was 54-46, up from 53.5-46.5. As always with Morgan over the past year, this result is strangely favourable to the Coalition. One should further query the utility of any poll conducted at this time of year – my intuition is that the absence of holiday-makers from their homes would bias such a poll towards Labor, although I don’t have any actual data to back that up.
Cuppa,
i will, but they also need to see those 2000 comments.
Remember the great Tooth Fish poacher hunt of 2003?
The animal rights people, populist opposition pollies, Greens pollies, grand-standing zealots and a brain-dead MSM connive to create what can best be described as a truly bizarre Australian public policy debate on whaling.
I heard the Sea Shepherd chap being interviewed and he likened killing whales to rape. Really?
The IWC has no statutory or international treaty basis. It has moral suasion. It has nothing else. If the Japanese wanted to do so, they could simply tell the IWC to get farked. The so-called ‘Whaling Sanctuary’ has no basis in international law. It may have moral suasion. It has nothing else. The Japanese could annunce the establishment of a International Puffer Fish sanctuary in the Southern Ocean and it would have the same legal status.
We kill several million kangaroos a year for pet food but we don’t want the Japanese to kill a couple of hundred whales a year for human and/or pet food.
Japanese kill whales where it is legal to do so. They then transport the meat to Japan on Japanese vessels. There are no relevant Australian import or export tariffs or customs duties. A customs vessel, per se, is therefore utterly irrelevant. Why a customs vessel, then? In international waters the customs vessel has no legal powers in relation to whalers conducting whaling. None at all. Is the customs vessel concept alive and well because the dills propounding a customs vessel recognize that a warship is the only practical alternative? And we all know where playing around with warships gets us.
Three dills deliberately flout international maritime law and illegally board a vessel belonging to another nation. By doing this they are reckoned to become the responsibility of the Australian Government. What is wrong with the idea of them making themselves accountable for what can only be described as a deliberate and pre-planned action?
Bushfire Bill
You may like to read “Late Victorian Holocausts” by Mike Davis. The cruelty shown by the British in deliberately starving tens of millions to death is every bit as bad. Heck their “scientific” studies on how little you could feed Indian coolies at work camps got down to lower calorie levels than Buchenwald.Sure there was a 30% death rate per month but the main thing was the notion that feeding them would encourage slacking and breeding. All this at a time of record harvests. The Brit parliament even passed a law making it an imprisonable offence for charities to feed the poor.
Puffy, we should put it to them, then, when writing, to ask GetUp to make the comments available. As the two organisations appear to be in alliance, it shouldn’t be too difficult. The information almost certainly still exists in a form accessible by the organisations themselves (if not the public).
Boer – The three protesters are no different to three people who smash your front door down because they don’t like the type of coffee you are brewing.
ruawake
Good memory ruawake. I’d forgotten all about that. Yes it did make a few headlines at the time.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/08/29/934982.htm
During WW1 the Japanese treated their German prisoners of war absolutely correctly. OTOH, in Australia the last massacre of Indigenous people happened in 1927.
People change. Cultures change.
Finns , look what they do in The Cove to your relatives ? Time to drop another bomb. I have heard that they harpoon a small young whale first, and wait till the family come to save the young one. I am a fan of the Sea Shepperds, what they are doing is working, blocking the entrance to the killing ship and that has stopped them from harpooning them and spend a lot time running away. The Japs have eaten THEIR share of whales world wide and now want to eat ours too.The boarding of the Japanese Navy Boat was to slow them down , while S.S headed back to the killing fields without the navy tracking them. I would rather waste Tax payers money this way and NOT pay for Dr. No’s election campaign for the next 18 months. My uncle was in Changi Prison so no love lost
CTar1
Things are different because:
(1) The three were trying to instigate an international incident between Australia and one of its major trading partners. It was therefore political rather than personal.
(2) The cost of bringing them back would get you around a thousand new doors.
(3) There is most likely an ethical difference between plant-based production systems and sentient-animal based production systems.
There is a big difference between skippy’s ‘boing bliong lights out’ than how whales are killed.
I wonder what would happen if indignant and self-righteous Japanese people started boarding roo shooter’s Toyotas and/or running interferance in Corollas?
PTMD
Well, they don’t take baby whales out of their mummies’ pouches and club them to death, I suppose.
CTar1
Crap crap crap. They climbed on board had nothing did nothing. They were as threatening and scary as a trepang. They were stupid but they were not pirates or terrorists. I’m cool with them doing it but I would also be cool with the Japanese if they decided to take them back to nippon…………and charge them for board and lodgings 🙂 Because you makes your choice you takes the consequences.
deflationite
My 2 yen’s worth – not very tasty at all. Made it all the worse to know that the culinary outcome was so yuck; then again, the Japanese seem to like natto…
Agree fully, BW. In fact, OH and I were both thinking that while they were being held on the Japanese ship, maybe they could be fed whale meat and blubber. I notice the idea was taken up by a cartoonist.
It is really the dumbest stunt since Howard and Reith’s War on the Wharfies. Then, nobody had any sympathy for wharfies – they might have been just above the BLF but it would have been a close thing. Yet within days of the whole Reith charade, the entire public sympathy was with the wharfies.
The Japanese must have about the most unloved mariners in this part of the world. Only the people smugglers might have generated more heat and they at least had the saving grace of a bevy of asylum seekers keen to pay for and use thier services.
Yet as soon as these tossers boarded the Japanese vessel the entire situation changed. It was as pointless as the motives of the Occupy Melbourne movement.
The Japanese whalers won’t emerge as heroes over this, but they’ll probably be treated with less hostility than in the past.
Boerwar
In WA there are alot of copies of a photo showing the fleet taking the original ANZAC’s to war in their last port of call in Australia,Albany W.A., prominent are the Rising Sun flags of the warships that escorted the fleet to the Middle East.
Boer – What they are trying instigate and the cost of retrieving them makes no difference to the legal position …. nor does plant based or other system based (including Star-Trek or Dr Who silicon based ‘things’). The offence is the same.
Like the Fukushima episode has shown, losing face is more important than anything else to the Japanese.
If they stop with the whale hunting, they will lose face big time. So they carry-on regardless.
The Japanese whalers won’t emerge as heroes over this, but they’ll probably be treated with less hostility than in the past.]
Plus the media have had their yearly feast of whale stuff. Sea Shepherd broke a boat, lied about what happened, towed it back to WA, picked up a few nongs to slow down the Japs cos the Steve Irwin is a slug that could probably manage 15 knots before its engines carked.
The 3 nongs had their pictures taken onboard the Steve Irwin but never boarded it. The partner of one nong knew they were going on a hunger strike but did not know they were planning to board the ship (peace Panda 😛 ).
Meanwhile Bobby dementia cannot figure out what are territorial waters, international waters, 12, 24 ,200 miles oh my brain just exploded.
CTar1
(1) The only thing I am trying to instigate with any degree of tenacity is global action on AGW. I would rate my efforts as having failed so you could call me a failed instigator, not that it matters much to anyone.
(2) I object to my tax payers being used to subsidise the illegal actions of others. Some of the legal things they use my tax money for are bad enough already.
(3) Please do not try and get me started on the legal industry. It probably feels deprived that the Gillard Government stitched up an extra-judicial deal with the Japanese Government on the Three Dill Amigos. I am also trying to keep off that topic and off the topic of what Mr Rudd will do next to destabilise the Gillard Prime Ministership until he makes me, so please do not raise that topic either.
(4) IMHO, there is an ethical difference between uprooting a carrot for food and cruelly and slowly killing a live animal for food. I recognise that some people would regard this as splitting ethical hairs.
The Finnigans
Terror at the prospect of losing face is not the sole preserve of “inscrutable orientals” it is pretty universal. That said polite diplomatic work had zero results and the confrontational approach will likely have the same result. So what should happen ?
Finns
We are going to have to shut down our olympian connection for a bit. Time for the plausible deniability strategy, big time. Burn everything; delete everything, put every hard drive through the metal crushers and check for disgruntled former employees, not that we ever have any.
It is truly shocking what our business friends left documented.
Are you claiming Kev-07 will make a break for Grantham and rip up the new vege crop? That’s sick.
Surely even Frank will support this proposition.
Save the whales (anyway),
Boerwar
You Kingdomist you ! Plant liberation uber alle !!! 🙂
poroti, tell me, how many cultures where “losing face” could lead to seppuku
Good evening all.
Frank:
I tried to link to it through my favourites, as I’d saved jen’s pitch there, but it comes up with ‘page not found’ or something.
I said the other night that the change to GetUp’s campaign process essentially removes the ‘grassroots movement’ element, and makes it no more transparent than the comments facility at a News Ltd blog. Who knows what members are proposing now? You can’t see proposals, unlike before, however wacky or left-field they may have been.
Not happy!
We could wait until all the krill dies because it can no longer form carbonate exoskeletons coz of all the H ions. It might take a while but it will fix the Japanese whaling issue once and for all.
Surprised to see so much pro whaling sentiment here.
The real analogy with whales is with DOGS. Whales have the capacity to feel the loss of a relative or friend. That is why it is wrong. More akin to Murder than rape. Whales have EMOTIONS. They can communicate and have mental capacity that exceeds our own.
So just consider for a few minutes the idea that some alien technologically advances species arrived on earth and decided that humans made good hunting or farming. Think on this when you say it is OK to hunt whales.
Yes I know that this is partly true of pigs and dogs although I do not think either grieve as do whales (and elephants).
Must be hard to slowly kill a dead animal 🙂
p
I do not have a closed mind on this. I would be happy to discuss the ethical issues with carrots.
Whatever – Next leader of the Labor party?
Confessions,
I see where you’re coming from. But it’s a work in progress, there are no dress rehearsals, it’s essentially trial-and-error. There have never been organisations like GetUp, Avaaz, MoveOn, 38 Degrees before. It stands to reason they’re feeling their way as they cut into the edge, trying different approaches, fine-tuning the method… (At least you’d hope that’s what’s happening).
BW
I assume therefore that you are a passionate advocate for cannibalism. If there is no ethical difference between a carrot and a whale then there is certainly less ethical difference between eating a whale and a human.
d
Mental capacity? Gimme a break. When did a whale last do ‘E equals MC squared’? I bet they can’t even count to two on their flukes. Come to think of it, does each whale have a single bilateral fluke, or are the left and right flukes counted separately as two flukes?
Call any vegetable, call them today. Call any vegetable, when you get off the train:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPJuOCL76tk&feature=related
d
I have no moral issues with cannibalism per se. In fact cannibalism would be far better than burning corpses, CO2-wise.
But there would need to be some health regulations, including for abbatoir standards, some form of informed consent, and some good recipes.
Oh, I see, we can’t protest the killing of whales until the whole of Australia is vegan.
If the whale industry was regulated with a a quarter of the force of ‘roo shooters in Oz, there wouldn’t be enough whale blubber in Japan to grease even one palm. I would love to see the whalers pass the yearly tests by getting a near perfect rounds with their harpoons.
Leveson
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/hearings/
d
I do think you misinterpreted a previous remark of mine. For example, I do think there is an ethical difference between stabbing life carrots with a table fork and stabbing a live whale with a table fork.
BW
Whales have a complex LANGUAGE. For all we know they do discuss E=MC squared or have philosophical discussions on the meaning of the universe.
We humans have a rather overrated sense of our own relative brain power and confuse technological and manual capacity with intelligence. Many birds for example have the mental agility of a five year old (but the emotional IQ of a 2 year old).
In any case the key moral issue is the whale’s capacity to grieve. That is the issue, not their mathematical ability.
so you support Criminal Activity by the Nongs.
Figures.
Dan – Long ago I had the Philmore Zappa bootleg record.
Carrots to feed the Japanese as an export sold on the basis they don’t need to get cold as get them (and easier to process)?
OK BW
At least you are consistent. Are you volunteering to become a delicacy?
The whale’s brain weighs more than A HUMAN.
The Finnigans
Amongst certain classes in Europe the “honourable thing to do” was the old pistol to the head. There be crapola about things like “mad muslim” suicide bombers but I have read enough accounts of combatants in all sorts of wars to know that suicidal actions are pretty bloody normal.
I was going to suggest that care with explosive harpoon heads was very likely to be self-regulating in the sense that it is an expensive business to miss. So I googled it and got the following solution to the slow whale death ethical issue:
http://au.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkmSgsg5PEj0AYW4L5gt.;_ylu=X3oDMTEzazJrajJpBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNwRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA0FVQzAwMV8x/SIG=134bh3dpf/EXP=1326392096/**http%3a//www.defenseindustrydaily.com/ships-ahoy-the-harpoon-missile-family-02718/
And Japanese whalers could be issued with strictly controlled numbers of tags for species, gender and age before their ‘hunt’ and not have one animal outside of the quota, without losing their licence, just like ‘roo shooters here. The killing of kangaroos in Australia is heavily regulated and has been and is impacted by international interest.
Cuppa
So does my next door neighbour.
Frank
I made no comment at all about the recent ship boarding.
I expressed surprise at the anti whaling sentiment. I was shocked yesterday to hear the NSW right dolly bird on the Drum refer to a whale as a fish. Truly shocked by the ignorance and stupidity. Assumed she was IPA until the announcer indicated she was Labor. I was genuinely shocked. Seems the NSW right is now actively trying to confront the Greens. Seem to hate them more than the Libs.