Australia: Thousands sign anti-whaling petition

A petition to save whales from commercial or scientific whaling will be presented to the New South Wales Parliament next week.

The Member for Tweed, Neville Newell, says thousands of people have supported the "Save Our Whales" campaign.

He says the Federal Government is being asked to take a tougher stand against Japan's plans to kill whales for scientific purposes.

Mr Newell says the humpback whale population is slowly increasing after commercial whaling last century.

"As they are growing and are recovering now, there's probably many more jobs that are involved in the whale watching industry than we ever gleaned from all that harvesting so many years ago," he said.

"And I certainly hope we never go back to something like that and I think the Japanese Government also has to recognise that the species have a right to exist on our planet."

He says the Federal Government should stand up to the Japanese "and certainly oppose the further harvesting of whales under the guise of scientific whaling, as the Japanese Government have been allowed to do in the past and continue to be able to do".

Source: www.abc.net.au