New Nationals State MP Louise Kingston tells Parliament the 1978 end of Albany whaling was based on a ‘lie’

WA’s newest MP has bemoaned the end of whaling in Albany 45 years ago, using her inaugural speech to Parliament to say it was based on a “lie” and liken the industry’s demise to the looming State ban on native forest logging. Louise Kingston, who last month filled the Upper House South West Region seat vacated by disgraced former WA Nationals MP James Hayward, grew up in the Great Southern town and detailed her family’s involvement in the industry in her speech last week, saying it was “the most incredible upbringing”. Ms Kingston’s late father was the first full-time spotter pilot for the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company and “sensed that whaling would end” in 1971 - seven years before that eventuated. Her family ended up building a museum at the old whaling station, known then as Whale World, where Ms Kingston began her working life after school and on weekends aged nine, “listening to people with a skewed opinion of whaling”. “When the whaling station closed in 1978, it was a very sad day for Albany and for the 102 workers who were given just six weeks to come to terms with a decision forced upon them without consideration,” Ms Kingston said. “What happened seemed so unfair, and it was the beginning of decisions made by those without a true understanding of actual circumstances - selling a lie - and a shift in conscientiousness based on feelings, not facts.” Ms Kingston elaborated to The West Australian: “I call it the cute furry animal syndrome”. She said bans on hunting humpback and southern right whales due to declining numbers were correct moves, but the listed company hunted sperm whales and was strictly controlled by the International Whaling Commission. “It was a very renewable and sustainable industry, and they utilised the full whale ... in all manner of stuff,” she said on Wednesday. “A lot of those things that we replaced, that the products were used for, are now from non-renewable resources. “We go ‘we’re saving the world over here’, but nobody ever looked at the alternatives.” Asked if she believed the Albany industry should never have ended, Ms Kingston initially replied “absolutely”, then said there should have been a transition, which historically were “never, never managed well”. Her comments come ahead of WA’s ban on native forest harvesting, announced in September 2021, kicking in from January. “You just announce on a certain date ‘I’m sorry, the timber industry is closing’,” Ms Kingston said. “Without any consultation to those affected is a very cruel way to do it.” Ms Kingston said Cheynes Beach Whaling Company decided to close itself because market conditions were changing - namely alternatives to whale products becoming cheaper. “But there was pressure on them from the Governments of the day to say that it would be closed.” The six weeks notice and ensuing unemployment spike in Albany was “horrifically difficult”, she added. The Southern Hemisphere ‘Division 5’ sperm whale population, which includes animals caught off Albany, is estimated to have plunged by 91 per cent for males aged over 20 years and by 26 per cent for females over 13 years between 1947 - when major 20th-century sperm whaling began - and 1979.