Fishing-Conference 
Cheerleader For Greenpeace

Visiting overseas speaker Eugene Lapointe used the term, which he said had been coined by someone else, to illustrate how the Government had been swayed by the environmental lobby group on issues such as whaling.

He said the Government's empathy for such groups was a major threat facing this country's fishing industry.

Mr. Lapointe, president of the International Wildlife Management Consortium-World Conservation Trust, was highly critical of Greenpeace's philosophy and tactics.

He said he could not see how the Government could justify supporting a group which engaged in ``acts of piracy'' to get its message across.

He referred to efforts to stop the Japanese catching whales for scientific purposes, which he said was a ``legal activity'' allowed under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

The fact that the Government lent greater weight to Greenpeace than the convention was ``scary'', he said.

The Prime Minister sparked a furore earlier in the year when she backed Greenpeace's protests against Japanese whaling. The Government has since continued to pressure Japan to abandon whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Mr. Lapointe said while the aim of ``saving the ocean'' was all very well, it was important that people's rights to use the ocean's resources were not denied in the process.�