Gene Technology Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Gene Technology Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I move, That the Gene Technology Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.

What a great day for science. As part of the agreements with our coalition partners, New Zealand First and the ACT Party, this Government has committed to introducing dedicated legislation for gene technology. This bill is a result of that commitment and the commitment we made to the New Zealand public to bring our regulations for gene technology into the 21st century. Our current regulations for genetically modified organisms are some of the most backward looking in the world. New Zealand has lagged behind other countries, such as Australia, Canada, and England, which have safely embraced these technologies for the benefit of their people and their economies.

Despite gene technologies having been in use in New Zealand since the 1970s, the restrictive rules and time-consuming processes we have imposed on researchers have made testing and embracing innovation outside the lab all but impossible. But no more. This Government has listened to our research, primary industry, and medical communities and the frustrations that they have felt over many years. Today, New Zealand moves into the present with a safe enabling regulatory regime. The legislation will enable the sorts of innovation that will benefit New Zealand while effectively managing risks to the health and safety of people and the environment.

Instead of continuing to frustrate, we want to enable New Zealand’s biotech ecosystem to attract and retain the brightest minds so that we can deliver solutions to the challenges New Zealand faces, such as climate change, such as increasing the productivity of our primary sector, such as conservation, such as human health—potential cancer cures. From advances in health treatments in our hospitals to supporting our farmers to produce the best food in the world, the transformative path of innovation is key to our country’s future and key to making New Zealanders’ lives better.

The key objective of this legislation is to proportionately regulate gene technologies. A one-size-fits-all approach is neither efficient nor appropriate for managing risks to the health and safety of people and the environment, and we have decades of experience, both here and abroad, to proportionately regulate gene technology. With a new regime, the Government is also taking a forward-looking and sensible approach to the regulation of innovative technologies like gene editing. Other countries around the world, from Australia to Japan to England, are safely embracing these very predictable technologies, and this new legislation will ensure we no longer lag behind. Rather than being apprehensive of innovation, we intend to regulate these more predictable technologies based on their most important factor—that’s their outcomes. Previous approaches have been akin to regulating electric cars more stringently because they are a new technology, whereas our approach will be logical, science-based, safe, and fair.

As a small country, we need to be realistic about what we can achieve and where we can best rely on overseas expertise to deliver benefits for New Zealanders. Our gene technology regime will allow the recognition of comparable overseas gene technologies regulators, which will enable us to make better use of considerable expertise overseas and expand the number of medical therapies available to New Zealanders. This will also have the benefit of freeing up the time of our new regulator, enabling them and supporting their staff to concentrate on areas where their limited time is best spent. It will enhance the efficiency of the regime for researchers and developers of new beneficial applications.

This Government is committed to creating a new regime that provides both transparent and understandable decisions from the new gene technology regulator and enables participation under a number of application types, so that the public can provide input. We believe an effective forum in which the public and users of the regime can express their views on these applications will be essential for public trust and building a more effective system over time. This will be enabled in a range of ways, from specific licence applications right through to the risk-tiering framework, which will underpin this new regime.

I want to take a moment to address some of the rhetoric I’ve heard this year, so as to assure New Zealanders what this change means and what it doesn’t. This change does not mean a free-for-all on genetic technologies in New Zealand. This change simply means that gene technologies have a pathway to regulatory assessment that is designed to ensure the public and environmental safety of New Zealand. This change does not mean that people have to use gene technologies. This change gives those who want to benefit from these technologies a regulatory approval method so that they can. They can opt in. They do not have to opt out. They’d have to opt in in order to use them.

This change does not mean we can no longer have organics or be GE-free. Genetically engineered products have been in New Zealand for years, in things such as soy milk. Other countries with a gene technology regime still have organic sectors. Think of the United States and Australia. The US is the largest organics producer in the world while also being the largest producer of genetically modified food. This change does not mean that we are opening up the floodgates to genetic engineering of all kinds—just to be very clear on that point. I can assure you that the genetic engineering of human embryos will remain banned.

What this does mean for New Zealanders and their families is this: New Zealanders will have better access to more effective cancer treatments, such as CAR T-cell therapy—if they want to. Our farmers will have access to productivity tools and emissions-reduction technologies, helping them to meet their climate goals and get higher yields—but only if they want to. Our scientists will no longer be confined to petri dishes; instead, having a chance to get their amazing technology approved for use outside the lab, and the New Zealand economy reaping the benefits of that.

Think of genetically edited apples that take one year to grow, fruit, and produce, rather than the five to seven years of other apples. Think how useful that would have been after Cyclone Gabrielle decimated so much of the Hawke’s Bay horticulture. I’ve seen this in one of our labs in a Crown research institute already being done here, but they can’t take it out the lab. We already have the science to do all of this, and these are the productivity tools. If we use them, they will save family businesses and they will save livelihoods. This is a wonderful day for science, and I encourage all New Zealanders to engage in what gene technology can do for them.

I would like to thank all the members and staff from around the House who engaged with myself and my office on these changes. As this bill progresses through the parliamentary process, I encourage all parties not to lose sight of the real aims of this new legislation. Increased productivity isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet; it means more income for our hard-working farmers, horticulturalists, and support for our rural and provincial communities. Greater innovation isn’t just another publication or science journal; it means more tools to address the big challenges of our age and provides greater opportunities to incentivise our researchers to stay.

A defining moment was the invention of the ability to precisely edit individual genes. The CRISPR process was announced in 2012, and it won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. That changed everything, because it means that we’re not splicing together genes from different species but that we’re editing existing genes. And more medical therapies aren’t just a nice to have; it means more effective and safe cancer treatments, and it means greater hope and quality of life for patients and their families.

I would also like to thank the staff at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for all the hard work they’ve been doing, and also my own staff, who have worked so hard to bring this to the House. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

This is a bill of gaps. The first gap is the gap between what the Minister says is happening and what is actually happening. The Minister says that we’re bringing our rules into alignment with other countries and, in particular, Australia, but there’s a critical difference. It lies in the space of non-regulated technologies and organisms.

It’s a tricky, technical area, where I’ve taken advice from experts. Those experts have told me that we would allow non-regulation of SDN-2 processes, where other countries such as Australia allow non-regulation of only SDN-1 processes—that’s site-directed nucleases. Although it sounds like precision engineering, that’s only in comparison with the old, mash-it-together techniques. The key point is that our rules would be much more permissive than Australia’s and, indeed, most countries’ rules. Australia is in the process of changing its rules, but it is consulting with the public on them. In the meantime, our proposed rules are not aligned with Australia or with other countries. We are way out ahead.

The second gap in this proposed legislation, unlike Australia, is that there has been no public consultation. There has been targeted consultation, but it has been conducted primarily with those who stand to benefit from the legislation. To their credit, officials have turned to researchers to fill the gap, but it is clear from the published research that most New Zealanders feel the need for much more information about genetic technologies and many have strongly nuanced views.

One study showed that when it comes to gene editing and genetic modification, 11 percent of Māori and 12 percent of non-Māori were strongly supportive, and 33 percent of Māori and 23 percent of non-Māori leaned supportive. It might be easy to interpret that as showing a fair degree of support for the use of GMOs and gene editing, but when I contacted the authors of that study, they clarified that “Although the leaning support of clusters—both Māori and non-Māori—had a quantitative score that leaned closer towards support for these new technologies, the open-ended responses found strong ambivalence”—and that’s their original emphasis there—“especially among Māori due to the uncertainty respondents felt about benefits and risks. For example, the qualitative responses of those in the Māori leaning supportive cluster listed significantly more concerns than opportunities, with several apprehensions about unintended consequences, ethical breaches, and lack of adequate information to make considered opinions.”

I am not convinced that New Zealanders support the widespread use of GMOs and gene technologies. Of course they support medical applications, but, as for wider uses, it’s an open question and one that the Minister has not grappled with.

The third gap is the lack of any economic analysis, beyond some hand-waving about possible benefits. There are no numbers in the regulatory impact statement as published. Any numbers that might have been there have been redacted. Worryingly, in the regulatory impact statement, officials say that there are “unquantified costs to organic/non-GMO primary producers.” The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research has quantified the possible costs and they estimate that the effect on our exports might be in the order of $10 billion to $20 billion a year. It’s not just the organic producers who will be affected. All New Zealand producers benefit from our clean, green imagine—an image that will be irreparably damaged if we do not get this legislation right.

The fourth gap is the exclusion of expertise. The regulator is required to set up a technical advisory committee, but that committee has no space for an ethicist. And while the regulator is also required to set up a Māori advisory committee, they are not required to consult that committee. I think that most of us in this House, like most New Zealanders, would support the use of GMO and gene editing techniques for medical applications. Indeed, Labour as a Government was working towards updating our rules for exactly that purpose. But this bill goes far further. It doesn’t just liberalise our rules around genetic engineering; it takes us out in advance of other countries, and it does so with no public consultation, no analysis of the impact on trade, no certain role for tangata whenua, no ethics input. There simply are too many gaps in this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The ability to intervene directly in life at the genetic level is a powerful ability. That is why it must be done with precaution, with ethics, and with broader societal values and costs and benefits of the technology, including the economy, being taken into consideration, and in recognition of the fact that proprietary interests are the main player in the genetically engineered field.

Here in New Zealand, we have a founding agreement that also affirms Māori have sovereignty over taonga and, thereby, protects indigenous species from proprietary ownership and modification without consent, and the important considerations of the Wai 262 claim and findings.

Genetic medicine is not contentious and has always been supported by the Greens, from insulin through to vaccines, and so too is contained precision fermentation. The release of live, self-replicating organisms into the environment and agricultural systems is a different story.

This particular legislation is a reckless rush job of potentially monumental proportions, because it has failed to take into account those who are most impacted by this liberalisation of the current regime. It is extraordinary that this Government has not done a full economic analysis of the impact of this legislation, and the only one done by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research finds a potential $10 billion to $20 billion cost of our existing value-added component to our primary production sector. That is an extraordinary cost to risk.

What is more, when it is assessed as to the marginal costs and benefits of the package, in the regulatory impact statement it states, “When GMOs are eventually released into the environment under the proposed regime, there will be additional costs to certify products as GMO free. In the Australian canola example, the additional certifications costs were estimated to be A$14.00 per tonne.” Which is to say, the burden of remaining GMO-free—as every current producer in this country is, whether you’re an animal producer, a fruit or a vegetable producer, or a crop producer—will now fall on those producers to prove their non-GMO status.

“It is expected that additional costs to obtain”—is the word that is used—“this premium should be borne by those seeking to obtain value from it.” Which is to say—and farmers of New Zealand, you should hear this out—you no longer are maintaining your current GE-free status, you in fact are having to pay the cost of obtaining it. This legislation, effectively, forfeits New Zealand’s current non-GMO producer status at a cost of potentially tens of billions of dollars to the economy. What an extraordinarily reckless piece of legislation this is. One would hope that this was actually treated with true scientific rigour in assessment of the evidence.

The evidence of genetic engineering is that the hyperbolic claims made by the Luxon Government for what it can do are not borne out by what we’ve seen in 30 years of commercial production of GE crops. New Zealand is not an outlier in having a rigorous regulatory regime. There are only actually 27 countries in the world that have commercial production of GE crops, out of 195 countries. Most of those countries are in the Americas and, of the four main commodity crops produced, 99 percentage of the global acreage is four crops: soy, maize, cotton, canola. They mostly end up as animal feed or as biofuels. There is no single product that has high commercial value that is sold as direct human food in the global market—after 40 years of billions of dollars of investment in the United States and thousands of field trials. When the Government suggests that, somehow, us forfeiting our GMO-free status is going to get us some sort of high-value product, it just doesn’t bear out with the evidence of what GE does.

The Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology talks about genetically engineering apples. Well, we currently have a potential 95 percent premium on New Zealand apples because they are GMO free, and there is no genetically engineered apple sold anywhere in the world that has extra commercial value—in fact, I know don’t know of any. Let’s be clear that when we evaluate how best to use GE—such as its amazing opportunities in medicine, which are not contentious—the cost to New Zealand farmers of that forfeiture, whereby they will wear the burden, is a big cost. They should be screaming blue murder, frankly, for this Government being willing to sacrifice and risk the value of their primary production industry. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take this call. I am so pleased to take this call. I know that a lot of hard work has gone into this issue to bring it to this stage, and I can attest to that.

It was in 2019 when I stood up as an Opposition member of Parliament and announced a policy which is, basically, reflected in this legislation. Then, in 2023, when the Hon David Seymour announced me as a candidate for the ACT Party at the ACT Party rally, I had the opportunity to deliver a speech, and in that speech I talked about this issue of profound significance: approaching genetic modification differently in New Zealand. I said that the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNO Act), which regulates genetic modification in New Zealand, is no longer fit for purpose. It was really pleasing to see that, a week after that, National reannounced a policy that is to change the approach towards genetic modification. Then it became part of our coalition agreement, and here we have this bill going through the first reading.

The examples that I used in my 2019 announcement are still valid. The examples I used were of HME ryegrass. This is high metabolisable energy ryegrass, developed by AgResearch. It was looking really promising, when they did all the tests at lab level, for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but then they couldn’t do field trials here in New Zealand. They could have, but they didn’t want to go through all the hoops dealing with the HSNO Act, so they decided to go overseas to do those field trials.

The other example is of another Crown Research Institute, Plant and Food Research. They developed red-fleshed apples. This is an apple—it is not just the skin that has red skin, but the flesh is also red. For any fruit, as we know, nutrition is important, but then the taste is important as well. The scientists couldn’t taste that fruit here in New Zealand; they had to take that red-fleshed apple overseas to taste.

With these two examples, what we can see is that the time line for bringing these products to commercial level was pushed out not just by months but by years and years. That is the kind of delay that is happening in the work that is happening in our labs at the moment, and this work is of really high value. It’s expensive as well, and we know that it’s highly skilled people who do this kind of work. When this kind of work goes overseas, we also, knowingly and unknowingly, are losing a lot of skilled workers, going to other countries where they can take that work to the next level.

It’s really important that we change this legislation and that the legislation is fit for purpose. We want to see that the legislation is not only working for the next 20 years. As we have seen, the past legislation, the HSNO Act, has worked for around 20 years, and already, from the last five to six years, I have been advocating for a change of this legislation. We want to see that this legislation actually works for longer, because this is a technology that is advancing really, really fast. That’s why it’s important that the legislation is not based on technique, but on risk. Regulation should be proportional to risk.

The other thing that is really important here is that we want to see that it’s consistent legislation all through the country, because scientists need consistency. They need certainty. If different local bodies start making regulations at their level, approaching genetic modification differently, then it will cause confusion, which is happening at the moment. We want to stop that confusion happening as well.

It’s really important to note that scientists out there are quite frustrated. They really want us to act on this and they want us to act on this really soon. I did a survey earlier this year. I surveyed scientists, those who are doing work in this field, and the responses that I received were quite amazing. I’m hearing the kind of work that they are doing. This work is of really, really high value. I have said this before and I will say this again: we cannot continue to feel proud standing up and saying that we are GE-free, because that means we are still stuck in that trial-and-error method of selective breeding.

Just to finish, it’s really great to see that so many colleagues on this side will be supporting this bill and are in support of this change, this approach that we’re changing towards genetic modification. In the start, when I started talking about this, I was advised not to use these two words: “genetic modification”; I was asked to use a different term. It’s really good to see that now these two words, “genetic modification”, can be used the way they should be used. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to also support this first reading of the Gene Technology Bill. This is a long-overdue update to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996. Science has moved on a long way, and this has been a third rail, I think, in New Zealand politics probably since the “Corngate” saga, so it is high time we had a look at this legislation.

Essentially, we are looking at liberalising the laws around gene technology, establishing a regulator. It is a three-tier system: a non-notifiable pathway, which is a fast track, if you like, for the lower-risk technologies; a notifiable pathway; and a licensed pathway. There is no doubt that there are more tools available for our scientists and the potential for significant and speedier advancements in technology, and we’ve heard quite a bit of support, particularly in the medical space already here this evening.

Of course, this is a wide-ranging technology. It is a very broad category. It is a continuum—from gene editing, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats stuff, where you’re, essentially, speeding up natural processes, right through to genetic modification and splicing different genes together. I note that it is a coalition agreement to “Liberalise genetic engineering laws”—it does go on to say, “while ensuring strong protections for human health and the environment.”

I know this is going to be a very consequential select committee. This is a very complex area for which there is a wide variety of views. New Zealand First will be led by that select committee report. We must not trade away our GE-free competitive advantage lightly. We, essentially, have last-mover advantage to think very, very carefully about how we position ourselves in this space, particularly in food. We are a major food exporter. We must take the feedback of that sector, particularly our major exporters, extremely seriously. Fonterra has historically been very cautious on this technology. I understand their attitude has softened a bit of late, but it is those major exporters, particularly, that we must look to, to give some guidance. We must understand the trade-offs we are making. This is very much a risk-reward.

The organic sector also, we do have some concerns around them. We must understand what the impacts are on them and what mechanisms are going to be available for them to continue on growing their sector.

Consumer sentiment is also a factor. We’ve seen recently a methane inhibitor released in the UK, the Bovaer product, that has received major consumer pushback, and so there is often a difference between the enthusiasm of scientists for this technology, and consumers, and we must look to understand that. We have to be alert and humble enough to recognise that truism. We must also be compatible with our trading partners. There is no point getting too far ahead of ourselves in that regard.

Our GE regime is going to change. The live question is where we draw the line. We look forward to the select committee report, and New Zealand First will be closely scrutinising. Thank you.

Tēnā rā koe, e te Pīka. I’ve got to say that this is one of the most complex, technical, and contentious bills—potentially just as contentious as the Treaty principles bill. Why? This bill may not be about a treaty between two people, but it is a treaty between humankind and all living things, the environment, animals, and food.

This is a kaupapa that I’m very passionate about. Before this political life, I was living the dream. I was a full-time gardener and a project manager where we created the first ever Māori organic community kai garden, in partnership with the Ministry for Primary Industries. We turned a once huge corn maze, which, honestly, just gave us hay fever, into a Māori supermarket, with lush, abundant, good, nutritious food for the local communities in my electorate. This is where I was introduced to the concept of what GE and GMO is, and the whakapapa of our kai.

What is gene technology, to break it down for all the rangatahi watching right now? It is the science of changing or controlling the genes inside living things, like plants, animals, or even bacteria, to make them do things we want. Genes are like the instructions that tell living things how to grow, look, and work. With gene technology, scientists can add, remove, or change these instructions to improve health, make better crops, or even create new medicines. It’s like editing a recipe to make it better, different, or, potentially, even worse.

I, myself, have personally been a GE- and GMO-free advocate, and before I carry on, I’d like to acknowledge the many different teams—He Waka Kai Ora, Hua Para Kore, He Whenua Rongo, Koro Hiakai, and te Papawhakaritorito Charitable Trust—for their continuous advocation and knowledge in this kaupapa.

What are the pros and cons? Pros: improved crops, disease treatment, better nutrition, and medical advancement. Cons: environmental risks, health concerns, ethical issues, and cost and controls. In my eyes, GE in the right hands is great, but GE in the wrong hands is terrible.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s current status on genetically modified organisms, otherwise known as GMOs, is that no fresh produce or meat is genetically modified and no GMOs are grown commercially. However, some processed foods may contain approved GMO ingredients that have been imported. With the introduction of this bill, that is about to completely change. J R Bruning from the Daily Telegraph NZ said, “The proposed deregulation of GMOs is so extreme that Judith Collins’ current proposal would turn New Zealand from best practice, tightly regulated jurisdiction to one of the weakest in the western world.”

This bill is taking the lead from Australia and it acknowledges that we need to bring our legislation up to par with the international framework. However, proposed European legislation has stalled, and in Europe, deregulation exclusively concerns plants; while in New Zealand, deregulation would encompass plants, animals, and microbes.

My first policy release was an Aotearoa kai sovereignty policy. Some of the main points within this policy were to honour Wai 262 and to reject research and the commercialisation that is done without hapū, iwi, and whānau consent. Two unresolved issues raised in the Wai 262 claim remain outstanding, and it is the duty of this Parliament to honour the claim and bring the claim to conclusion: decisions about flora, fauna, and wider environment that are symbolic to Māori, and decisions about how education, culture, and heritage agencies support the transmission of Māori culture. We don’t oppose the research and rangahau that can create massive benefits for humankind, but, as a nation, we must ensure that these checks and balances in our regulatory system framework are in a place that is robust enough to counter the potential risk factors. We have no idea of the long-term impacts into the future. We are literally going into the unknown, or, otherwise, opening a can of worms.

As Māori gardeners, me, Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and Mariameno Kapa-Kingi have various seeds that were handed down from our ancestors, all the way from Hawaiki, which we still plant in our back yards today. This speaks volumes as to the way in which we protect our Māori intangible and tangible resources and taonga. I could have gone on longer, but—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This Government is ending the 30-year ban on gene technology outside the lab. There’s a reason we’re doing this: it’s because we are going to tackle climate change. There is technology out there that we can use to tackle climate change, that we can use to help people get better from cancer, that we can use to boost productivity—and at the current settings, we don’t have the ability to do that. That’s what we’re going to. It’s going to be a key source of science that has the potential to deliver enormous benefit to New Zealand, and we intend to utilise it.

Now, there are people out there that are worried about the safeguards. Let me say to that: as the Minister has clearly articulated, there will be a regulator set up which will be established to oversee the use of gene technology in New Zealand. You don’t have to utilise it if you don’t want to, as Minister Collins said on a number of occasions.

We did hear a member opposite, I think, raise concerns about a lack of public consultation on the matter; there will be. It’s called a select committee. I know the members of the Health Committee will do a very good job on that when it comes to us soon.

We are moving to deliver on our pre-election commitment to deliver gene technology and we are delivering on our coalition agreements with our partners. We are going to use technology, like gene technology, for the benefit of New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on this gene technology editing piece of legislation which unfortunately Labour at this stage cannot support going any further, and I’d like to cover off the reasons as to why.

As my colleague previously mentioned before, we can see the absolute benefits as far as medical research, etc., vaccines, and all of those things go, but where we have concern is partly around the consultation process, or lack thereof. The previous speaker, Sam Uffindell, talked about the fact that consultation will be happening as part of the select committee process, but I would argue that before something as big and complex as this is developed, there should be far wider consultation before it even gets to this stage; before the bill is even completely developed.

In fact, there was some research done recently which showed 93 percent of the farmers that were surveyed thought it was important that there was widespread consultation with farmers. That has not happened. We know that there is a wide and diverse range of views as far as this particular subject goes, and I would argue that is particularly relevant as far as the horticultural sector goes. There is some real concern out there, within that sector, as to what this could mean for them.

If we think about those that are growing organically, what happens if we have some sort of a crop or something that flowers and then contaminates a property nearby that is organic? Who pays for that happening? Will there be insurances taken out for those who are responsible for that in order for them to have to pay compensation? Is there going to be additional costs for those organic growers to have to go through and show that they continue to comply and be organic farmers?

I also want to touch on some of the information that we have seen in this regulatory impact statement (RIS), which is put together with advice for the Minister. There are a lot of concerns that were raised, particularly around the lack of being able to consult widely. They were only able to do some specific, targeted consultation, and I just think that that’s really irresponsible when we’re looking at a piece of legislation that means that our farmers and our growers and others are going to have to just put up with—whether they choose it or not, it’s going to be out there.

Yes, I can understand and see the benefits as far as research and innovation goes. When we think about reducing our methane targets and all those kinds of things, I absolutely understand and get that, but the crux of the matter is—

Hon Mark Patterson: Support it to the select committee.

Hon JO LUXTON: —that there is lack of consultation, Mr Patterson; lack of consultation from all those relevant in the sectors, and it should be done well before the select committee process, Mr Patterson.

Sam Uffindell: There was an election, as well.

Hon JO LUXTON: The other thing—that’s not consultation on this particular piece of legislation. The consultation—[Interruption]

OK, they talk about their election and their campaigning, and they campaigned on it, but you didn’t campaign on the details, did you, Mr Uffindell? You didn’t campaign on the details; you didn’t campaign on the potential risks to our trade, which I know that my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor is going to speak to, because there are some serious implications.

The one other thing that I would like to highlight is that they’re going to establish a Māori advisory committee. As far as I can tell, this is simply tokenistic; absolutely tokenistic because, reading this RIS, they talk about: “The proposals alter the status quo by placing a duty [of] decision makers to manage adverse effects to Māori kaitiaki relationships with specific species, instead of requiring them to take into account Te Tiriti principles more generally. Given time and scope constraints, officials did not analyse a wide range of options on how to best protect Māori rights and interests.”

They also gave different options to Ministers—which they chose not to give Māori the opportunity to have decision making in this process. We do not support this.

It is a great day for science. I have spent my working life dedicated to scientific research, including using these genetic technologies, which, ultimately, is about improving the health outcomes of all New Zealanders and improving our quality of life. I’m also an organic producer, so I understand people that are producing things organically, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive; we can do both.

This bill is very important to unleash our medical research, our agricultural research, because this is not just about CAR T-cells and cancer treatments; it’s also about environmental and economic outcomes for all New Zealanders. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

In 2023, a report was put out by Te Puna Whakaaronui which recommended that we have a conversation on GE regulation because we had fallen behind. At the same time, the Labour Government was looking at changes to GE regulations for medical purposes. The conversation has not occurred. What we have received in the House is a bill—a bill that would have limited scope for change, that this Government is going to proceed with.

The question I have is: who paid money to bring this bill into this House? Who paid money to bring this bill into this House? There are officials up there, they’ve done quite a lot of work. They’ve been instructed by the Government to rush that work, and they’ve written the report here—

Hon Scott Simpson: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I hesitated to interrupt the member on his feet, but to allege that money had transferred to bring a bill into this House is utterly unparliamentary and the member should stand, withdraw, and apologise.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think it was on the border, but the thing that was concerning me was bringing officials into the debate, which actually, the Hon Damien O’Connor, I think, probably wasn’t the wisest thing across that whole sentence.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Can I just acknowledge it wasn’t to discredit in any way the officials, but they’ve done a report here of 131 pages, which is quite comprehensive, and you should read it. It sets up a regulator—a person within the Environmental Protection Authority who is accountable only to the Minister—only to the Minister. What piece of legislation of such significance would set up such a regime?

I’ve gone through this in detail. I’ll start off here—[Interruption]—with officials’ advice that says—they’re very sensitive, aren’t they, on this? Very sensitive, they are. “We are unable to comprehensively quantify these expected benefits as technology development is uncertain, there are few “ready for market” gene technologies in New Zealand currently and the make-up of New Zealand’s food and fibre industry is distinct.” The reality is that our economy depends on the production and the sale of the finest food and fibre in the world. Our economy depends upon it and the report quite clearly says that there is general enthusiasm and support for progress in medicine, but not in the food and fibre sectors, which is where a conversation needs to occur.

I’ll go through this again and quote here: “Current understanding of the current and potential gene technology sector limited our ability to outline both benefits and potential impacts (and is in part a consequence of the existing regulatory constraints on the activity).” They go on to say, “This scope limitation has meant [and] mean that we have not considered all potential options that may have effectively addressed key issues underlying”. This has been rushed. There has been no conversation. In here, it once again says that there may not be the public licence to progress the very changes that this Government may want to see—and indeed I want to see as well, but I want to see a cautious progress here.

Can I go on to say from this report, which everyone should have, “The policy development process has been limited by a time line seeking to Cabinet approval of policy decisions to enable the introduction of a Bill into the House before the end of 2024, [in order to] enable the regime to be operational in 2025. This has compressed the analysis able to be undertaken in a highly complex area, and may mean options, impacts, and consequences were not (or … fully) considered.”

There has been little or no consideration of what the impacts of this might be on core parts of our economy. I’ll go on to say that in assessing the so-called risk analysis, the question of whether trade in our markets should be taken into account, it has been rejected. It says here, “The expected eventual release into the environment of some GMOs would involve potential risks for trade and market access because trading partners may not accept exports that have been ‘contaminated’ by GMOs, incidentally or otherwise.”

This puts at risk our markets and the sale of all of our primary produce, and there has not been any proper consultation, proper consideration. Indeed, this bill prevents the consideration, on the basis of the recommendations in here, of those market access. This is potentially disastrous for trade. Labour will be not supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be the final speaker in this debate on the first reading of the Gene Technology Bill. It’s a great day for science, as many have said. This bill puts in place the regulatory enablement to allow the exciting advancements in potential in health research and biotech, in the plant and food sector, and especially in our Crown research institutes, like Scion. This is a great day. I commend the bill to the House.