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Adjournment Speech

Date:
1st April

Subject:
Genetically Modified Crop Trials

"I support this motion, which is urgent for the reasons given by the Hon. Dr Peter Wong. This issue has gone from being a peripheral issue— it was regarded as the realm of the off-beat, the totally organic, hippies with beads and tie-dyed muslin clothes—to an issue for mainstream farmers as they look realistically at the fact that many of their markets do not want genetically modified [GM] product that may be an immense disadvantage in the marketplace. It is not only people with Rastafarian haircuts and beads who are concerned about this; Joe and Susan Average are also concerned about what might be in their food, that they have not been told what might be in their food, and that the technology is moving ahead, away from more natural foods to more junk food. Indeed, yesterday McDonald's announced that it would provide the contents of products on labels. That is a great step forward for consumer power.

This issue is being debated today, and it is being taken much more seriously than it was initially, because people realise that consumers have the right to know what is happening. In the past week there has been a seismic shift against GM crops. Western Australia has banned genetically modified crops, as was reported on the ABC on 23 March; Victoria has a moratorium, as was reported by the Australian Associated Press on 25 March; and Bayer has pulled out of the GM trials in the United Kingdom, as reported on the BBC yesterday, 31 March. These are not small events; they are big seismic shifts. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries must think seriously about what he is doing if he wants to put New South Wales at the forefront of GM trials. The problem is that if something goes wrong with the trial in effect it will be like the introduction of rabbits and cane toads; there may be spill-over effects for a long time to come. There is a new book about the danger of feral plants to Australia and its wildlife.

Before white settlement, Australia had been isolated for at least tens of thousands of years and had developed specially adapted plants, as no seeds from other lands had been introduced. However, those specially adapted plants are now under threat from introduced species, which may well affect biodiversity all the way down the line. There is a loss of biodiversity when farmers with a small number of crops remove plants that are not immediately necessary for the economy. If certain varieties of crops made in laboratories take over, and pesticides which affect bacteria are used, the spill-over effect on entire ecosystems may not be well known. Whether the transfer of genetic material will result in the transfer of resistance to pesticides in weeds and so on is a scientific question. Certainly, the transfer of bacterial resistance to antibiotics happens in bowel flora and is a large problem in the development of resistance to antibiotics in medicine. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that environmental hazards may rebound on human health, but they may simply be other adverse effects.

Interestingly, research tends to happen in areas where there is a profit for the person doing the research, if the research is successful. Areas where the research will not immediately produce returns for the researcher have tended to remain in the realms of government; and as government work is increasingly in joint partnerships with commercial operators, the pure research that might have uncovered adverse effects will not be done. GM research is a huge field. It would take many thousands of person years to even begin to understand this, but the research is simply not being done because there is no money in it. So in a sense the precautionary principle becomes more necessary. There are possible health effects. Although one could argue that if the same building blocks or amino acids in DNA are being used, it is likely that they will be digested like any others and there will probably not be health effects. However, this is a probability, not a certainty, and all of these things have an element of risk.

What is being asked is that the profits go to foreign-owned companies while the risks are being taken by the Australian people. The insurance companies are concerned about this. Not only is there a risk to health; there is a risk of immensely expensive litigation. I do not have time for insurance companies because the entire practice of our country, our recreation, our public liability, our medical system are held to ransom by arbitrarily set premiums. I do not have any time for insurance companies but they recognise an unquantifiable and difficult risk when they see one. They will not provide cover to companies for any harm done by the possible escape of plants; nor will they cover farmers who have crops adjacent to GM crops which might be contaminated and cause them to lose their markets. So while there are legal precedents in tort law about the escape of sheep or oil onto adjacent properties, the fact is that it is ants fighting elephants in terms of small farmers fighting big multinational companies. Trying to prove that a crop originated on an adjacent property, rather than on a property thousands of miles away, is extremely difficult. It tends to boil down to who has the resources to fight. As a person who believes in prevention, it is not a question of working out what remedies there might be after the event. Clearly, preventing the problem is the way to go.

As I have said before, there is a huge inequity in power. If someone wants to do something against a powerful lobby—for example, if 85 per cent of Australians want smoke-free indoor air—they still have great difficulty getting it because of tradition and the power of the well-moneyed lobby. If a small moneyed interest wants something, it can get it against the wishes of the people. In this case I would say that 3 per cent of the population—the moneyed interest—wants this and looks like getting it. It is time the Government did what most people want. I said somewhat cynically that the rise of the multinationals in the food agriculture business is a great threat, and I have referred previously to the book How the Other Half Dies by Susan George.

Again, if one were being cynical, one would say that it would suit the interests of the multinationals in the United States and Canada who have GM crops for Australia to be unable to say that we are GM-free. If there is some degree of contamination from a trial and we are then unable to say that our crops are GM-free, the people who have GM-free crops will be quick to say that the Australians have some contamination and that it would be better to buy their crops. Plenty of people in the marketplace are being quite ruthless. I do not know why the Government should fall over itself to support these people. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries asked for huge amounts of power, and because the Federal Government has been extremely slack in regulating this aspect we supported the legislation that gave a lot of power to the Minister.

The Minister now says that we gave him all that power and approved the composition of the advisory committee and approved what he was doing. He is now going ahead with the somewhat cavalier confidence he tends to have. The Minister should remember that we supported his legislation because we had no choice. The Federal Government had chosen not to act and the Minister's regulation, imperfect as it may have been, was the only choice we had. We supported the legislation on the basis that it was that or nothing, and nothing was unacceptable. The Minister has been given this power and we believe he should use it prudently. He should not approve these trials. As the Hon. Dr Peter Wong says, the Minister is going to China in the next couple of days and the planting has to happen this month. We ask that he not approve this trial and that he follow the Victorians with a moratorium or the Western Australians with a ban in the interests of caution and for the long-term welfare of Australia's farmers."