When National came out in March as supporting the resumption of the commercial slaughter of whales (a position that it has subsequently backed away from), the Labour Party and Chris Carter in particular were vocal in their opposition, denouncing the plan and launching a petition to oppose it. From their public statements, you'd get the impression that Labour opposed the resumption of any commercial whaling. But you'd be wrong. Pundit's Claire Browning has a major scoop today with MFAT papers showing that the IWC negotiations to resume commercial whaling were actively pushed by Phil Goff and Chris Carter during their time in office. Negotiations on a revised management scheme to govern commercial whaling morphed from being an activity quietly carried out in the background as a contingency plan if the moratorium was ever overturned to being actively pushed at a high level by Carter and the Labour Cabinet. Meanwhile, threats to take Japan to the International Court of Justice to enforce the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary were downplayed. The difference between this and National's position? SFA.
Read the whole thing for the juicy quotes (of which there will be more when the full papers are eventually released; they're currently being held up by Labour). But the overall picture is one of utter hypocrisy on Carter's part. Key’s whaling policy: unpopular, short-sighted and certainly never Labour’s? Yeah, right.
I despise hypocrites, and I despise politicians who try to take the public for a ride. Carter is both - and he deserves our utter contempt.
