The Morrison government has vowed to oppose a Japanese push for commercial and 'scientific' whaling and is calling on other countries to join the fight.
Pacific minister Anne Ruston will attend the International Whaling Commission meeting in Brazil this weekend but return to Australia before it wraps up at the end of next week.
"Australia will continue to oppose any efforts to overturn the global moratorium on commercial whaling and will call on like-minded nations to join us in rejecting any proposal to allow commercial whaling," Senator Ruston said in a statement on Friday.
"We will also oppose any attempts to weaken the commission's decision-making rules or establish catch-limits for commercial whaling."
Pacific minister Anne Ruston will represent Australia at this weekend's International Whaling Commission meeting in Brazil. Source: Twitter @Anne_Ruston
The Japan Fisheries Agency wants an end to the whaling moratorium and for new commercial whaling quotas to be established by 2020.
Aboriginal subsistence whaling, governance reform, special permit whaling and the establishment of a South Atlantic whale sanctuary are also on the agenda for the meeting.
Representatives of the Australian Marine Conservation Society will travel to Brazil for the meeting to oppose Japan's "outrageous" intentions, saying whales need help not harpoons.
"Whales face a greater number of threats today than at any stage in their past," campaigns manager Tooni Mahto said in a statement on Friday.
"Climate change, entanglement in fishing nets, plastic pollution, underwater noise and ship strikes threaten our ocean giants."
Tooni Mahto, Australian Marine Conservation Society campaigns manager. Source: www.marineconservation.org.au
Former Greens leader Bob Brown will lead a protest outside the Japanese embassy in Canberra next Tuesday to send the message that commercial whaling has "no place in the modern world".
"This illegal, barbaric practice, which pushed so many whale species to the very edge of extinction, was finally banned in 1986 after decades of campaigning," he said in a statement on Friday.
"This hard-fought achievement was not won only to be tossed out at the behest of a single, bloody-minded government."
