CANBERRA, Australia (3 June 2007) -- Australia's environment minister on Sunday likened Japan to a toddler having a tantrum in its response to international condemnation of commercial whaling. Japan threatened to abandon the International Whaling Commission after a conference in Alaska last week passed a resolution upholding a 21-year moratorium on commercial whaling. "It was a very bad conference for Japan," Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, an anti-whaling advocate who attended the Anchorage conference, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. TV. Using a stinging colloquialism, Turnbull accused Japan of a "dummy spit," "dummy" being an Australian term for a toddler's pacifier that is spit out at the onset of a tantrum. "I think their huge dummy spit at the end will not reflect well on Tokyo," Turnbull said. "I think the Japanese government really has to sit back and ask itself, looking at the debacle that was Japan's outcome at the whaling conference, ... can we continue to fly in the face of world opinion on this issue?" | 
