Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I will move that this bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

In the 3 years since the royal commission reported back we have picked up a considerable amount of knowledge about genetic engineering, and I would have to say that almost without exception it has been very bad news for the GE industry. As members will know, I have sent each one of them a personal letter outlining some of my concerns about GE so I will not go into them in detail now. I want to concentrate on a couple of issues that I think clarify why I consider that this technology is fatally flawed in terms of exposing it to the wider environment in New Zealand. Perhaps the most damning thing of all has occurred from a research project called the human genome project. Members may recall that this project was designed to identify the human genetic profile and to understand the relationship between all the genes that we pass on, from generation to generation—that is, the heritable genes; the genes that give us eye colour, skin colour, susceptibility to disease, and things like that.

It was a fine ideal. The people working on that project identified that there is something like 100,000 different heritable traits in the human body. They went on their way, looking for the 100,000 genes that relate to those outcomes. But the human genome project scored a spectacular own goal. Far from proving that this was a precise science and they could map all these genes to the outcomes, one on one, they found that instead of 100,000 genes there were only 30,000. So they could not map one gene to one outcome; they had to map one gene to multiple outcomes—on average, about 3½ per gene. So they had multiple traits from one gene.

What is now becoming clear as a result of this human genome project is that the genes do not work in isolation. They work with each other, and they work with the proteins that exist in each cell. That is what determines the outcome of any manipulation. We now know that not only does this make it enormously more difficult to isolate a desired gene to have a particular outcome, it is also impossible to know what additional undesired outcomes will come from the same gene. Let me quote from the US Government website: “Outcomes are specified by the gene sequence and by the proteins in the same cell.” It then goes on to say that studies of the relationship will be the focus of research for many decades to come. We are just in the infancy of this science.

Members should think about it. If we take a gene from the human body, each cell has the same DNA string. Every cell in our body has DNA. But our cells have different functions. The same DNA is found in our toenail cells as is found in our liver cells, blood cells, and eyeball cells. So if we were to take a DNA string from there and put it into some other animal, for argument’s sake, do we know how it will express? The answer is no, we do not know.

We lay people can take several things from this. First of all, moving a gene from one location to another does not give a specific outcome. Despite what people in the industry say, it does not give a specific outcome; it gives multiple outcomes. Secondly, changing one gene in the sequence may lead to a cascading sequence of events—not just one event. The academic literature is full of words like “may”, “appear”, and “believe”. Clearly, biologists do not understand the chemistry of life. This also will put to rest the idea of substantial equivalence—the idea that if it looks the same, smells the same, and tastes the same it is the same. It may appear that way, but it is inevitable there will be other outcomes that we do not necessarily see upfront. For thinking people this surely is game, set, and match for genetic engineering.

Hon Marian Hobbs: Oh!

IAN EWEN-STREET: It is game over, I say to the Minister. One simply cannot say that this is a precise science. In fact, we have proved that it is a very imprecise science.

If we take that bit of information in conjunction with the way consumers in our elite markets overseas treat genetic engineering, we can see we are on to a loser. But we should think about what is happening to the biotech companies. Of the top 50 biotech corporates, last year 38 made losses. Overall, they lost $5.4 billion in 1 year, including those that made a profit. The Wall Street Journal, that well-known left-wing rag, describes the industry as having “yielded negative returns for decades and it generally digs its hole deeper every year.”

The consumer resistance to genetically modified foods in particular is powerful for New Zealand. We are a market-driven economy. We must listen to the market signals of the people who buy our food products, and those signals are crystal-clear. People simply do not want to buy genetically engineered food. Look at the example of the United States and Canada, going back 5 or 6 years. America’s corn exports to the European Union declined by 98 percent in 2 years. The Canadian canola growers lost 100 percent of their market in 2 years, and it has never recovered. At least those countries have a subsidy scheme so that the farmers actually survived. But in Argentina, which started growing GE soy, the whole economy has become a basket case.

I urge members to think about this. We are at present trying to negotiate a free-trade deal with America. One of the conditions of any free-trade deal we may have with America is that it wants us to embrace genetic engineering. That is a bit strange. If genetic engineering were so good, the Americans would be saying: “Hey, look, we don’t mind having a free-trade deal with you, but you can’t have our really good GE stuff; we’re going to keep that to ourselves.” But to put it as a condition of a free-trade deal means there is something wrong with it—and the thing that is wrong with it is that they cannot sell it. They cannot sell it to elite markets in the European Union, Japan, Australia, or anywhere else. They cannot sell it other than as stock feed. They cannot even give it away as aid to the Third World.

They are now working in a different market from us. They do not sell the same products. Our products are seen overseas as being clean, green, pure, natural, and very highly sought after. The prices we get in our overseas market are extremely good. Primary production exports are booming, despite the high dollar. We have a marketing opportunity made in heaven. Because we no longer compete with equivalent products from America, Canada, Argentina, and, to a certain extent, Australia, we can virtually name our price. They cannot sell their product. The only way they can get back into that market, having gone down this one-way street of GE, is to bring us down to the same level. That is why they want us to have GE in this country. It makes sense for us not to go the same way.

I would like the Minister to pause for a moment and think about the ownership of patents. She is on record as saying that one day GE will pay for our health and education needs in this country.

Hon Marian Hobbs: That’s not what she said.

IAN EWEN-STREET: I say to the Minister that it is in the Hansard; I urge her to check. Something like 97 percent of the patents are owned by overseas companies. So even if we did develop something in this country that was valuable, we still would not make money out of the patents; we would simply export all of that profit.

This moratorium gives us time. It gives us time to think, to say: “Let’s have a cup of tea.” Does anybody actually regret the fact that New Zealand is nuclear-free? No, they do not. Thinking people, by and large, do not. I recommend this bill to the House and urge members to support it going to the select committee.

The Labour Party will be opposing the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill. I want to remind members why we instituted a moratorium that prevented the Environmental Risk Management Authority from considering or approving applications to release genetically modified organisms. Labour assumed Government late in 1999. We had made a commitment to hold an inquiry or a royal commission into how New Zealand coped with the technologies surrounding genetic modification. One of the differences, I suppose, between the Labour thinkers in the Labour Government and the Green thinkers is that our minds were open. They were not predetermined. We are thinkers.

The royal commission sat and produced a four-volume report, much of which, we have discovered, has remained unread by many people. It made a number of recommendations, including law change and research. We needed time to enact the recommendations of the royal commission. That is why we had a moratorium on the release of genetically modified organisms. The moratorium was set to end on 29 October 2003, and it did. People undressed in this Chamber and lay naked on the lawn, but the lifting of the moratorium did not result in flying pigs, or potatoes with frogs’ legs, as I can remember some of the advertisements portraying. It was absolutely the epitome of mis-education, which really antagonises me as a teacher and as a believer in veritas. In fact, no GMOs have been fully or even conditionally released in this country. Is there any acknowledgment of that by the Greens? Not on your nelly! They want to tell people that GMOs are all around them, escaping under their chairs, and in their mattresses.

The Environmental Risk Management Authority has had no new applications for genetically modified organisms. It has focused on hazardous substances. During the endless debates, I was told that supermarkets overseas featured GM-free products. In the summer of 2003 I went on a private visit to Ireland, and I drove my daughter mad. At every town we stopped in, we went into Tesco, or whatever supermarket was there, and around the shelves we went. I found fewer numbers of shelves containing organic foods than in the supermarket in Thorndon. One day in Tesco I found one cornflakes packet that stated in its small print that it contained no genetically modified organisms. Not only that, I stayed on organic farms and discussed all these issues with the people there. I was not convinced of the strength of that marketing argument.

I listened to the speech made by my good friend Ian Ewen-Street, who talked about the human genome project. He said, as though it were news, that it told us that it is not a precise measurement, that it is now clear that genes do not work in isolation, and that it is complex. OK—is that not fabulous? Is that not absolutely fabulous? A key to 21st century biology will be understanding molecular regulation at a network level. Is that not beaut? That is a new way of moving forward. Is it not fabulous that we have a convergence of disciplines, just as we have had in engineering?

Why is it scary that we now have chemical genetics, epigenetics, and this convergence of new disciplines? I am not afraid of new knowledge. I embrace new knowledge. That is the real essence of learning. That is what I did as a principal, by the way. My problem with this whole opposition to technology from the Greens is their conviction that they know that X is wrong. It is so non-scientific to say, hand on heart: “I know it is wrong.” God save us!

Rod Donald: So nuclear power’s safe, too, is it?

Hon MARIAN HOBBS: I will come to nuclear power. Then the member talked about the losses of some companies. But let us go to the point that those members have been asking for. I read an article written by Ian Ewen-Street that stated: “Let’s wait until we get to the fork in the road.”—the fork in the road being, maybe, the difference between genetic modification and smart breeding. I say to the member, who laughs all the time, that I prefer a case by case approach over blanket moratoriums. A case by case approach allows us to use our brain and to say that, OK, maybe this is not the time to genetically modify every dairy cow in the country. Also, the two approaches that are being used on that fork in the road refer only to crop production. They are not about genetic modification, which is used in a far wider way with animals and in other agencies.

Finally, what about the waiting? What about those moratoriums that are waiting until we reach the fork in the road? That is like telling us to wait until climate change happens, before we do anything about it. That is a bit like telling us to say: “There is a cyclone coming. Oh, my God—we’re in the Cook Islands!”, and then telling us not to do what the wonderful people in the Cook Islands did, which was manage the risk. That is what we are on about: risk management.

There is another thing that those members sometimes complain about. Another Green member said that we should not be giving money towards looking at genetically modifying rye grass. That work, of course, is happening in Australia. Again, those members say: “Don’t invest.” Well, maybe it is too late. If we have the attitude that we know everything and that all those potential answers are wrong, maybe it will then be too late to invest and to come up with an answer as to how we can reduce methane emissions through improved rye grass. That is a possibility. The member says: “No, no, I wouldn’t possibly look at that.”, so the member is denying a solution to another problem. I do not want to make a personal comment but if the member had my hair colour he would know that things are no longer black and white, and that is the nature of science and the nature of knowledge.

There is another way of looking at this, too. If we are looking at genetically modified rye grass—which, I say to all listeners, is not about to happen in New Zealand today; it may be 7 or 8 years before the research in Australia ever bears any fruit, if it bears any fruit—and if we said that we would not look at any of those issues at all, there might be an answer that we would miss about growing better animals so that there are fewer animals on the western side of Taupō and less nitrate going into our waterways, because we are managing the issue more effectively. In other words, if we were to stop research altogether and say: “I know it all. I know that genetic modification as a technology is absolutely wrong. I know it all.”, we would deny any chance to answer a number of problems.

I come to nuclear technology, which is pretty dear to my heart. Yes, there is a simplistic slogan that says “Nuclear-free New Zealand”, but it is about weapons and it is about energy. Every one of us who goes into a hospital and has radiation treatment is subjected to the use of nuclear technology. In a whole number of ways we use nuclear technology. To say that we think any science or technology should be totally banned is absurd. Yes, it is true that in New Zealand we do not need nuclear energy—I could probably have an argument with my good friend from ACT on that matter. However, there is an even better reason for our stance, which I explained to somebody the other day. As members may have seen if they read the New York Times this morning, President Bush has said that he will control all the sources of enriched uranium in the world, whether it be for weapons grade or for energy grade. That would make us fairly dependent, and we would become price-takers rather than price-makers. I would rather go into renewable energy.

I am saying that there is no way to wipe out a whole technology, so there is no analogy in saying that genetically modified - free equals nuclear-free. We said “nuclear-power free”, we said “nuclear-weapons free”, but every one of us who has a mammogram is subjected to the use of nuclear technology. Is that not right? Why do we not, therefore, choose case by case where we go with genetic modification, rather than choose this absolutely slap-on and denying approach? I was brought up knowing about Galileo, and about what the Pope did to Galileo when he said that he was evil because he tried to think outside the square. The Greens are like the Pope of that time, who said: “There is only one answer. I know it, and I have all the secrets.” That is so arrogant! This is about veritas, it is about truth, and it is about managing the risk.

I am feeling quite nervous as I stand in opposition to this bill tonight, because I totally agree with everything that the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Marian Hobbs, has just said, and that is amazing. It makes me feel quite nervous, I have to say. I say to my honourable colleague Ian Ewen-Street next door that I know he is a sound thinker and that he does his research. We have worked together on select committees before. He is an honourable member. One can understand why he is leaving the Green Party, and one can understand why he is leaving Parliament. He is an honourable member, but he is totally wrong on this issue.

This bill is wrong, and it is wrong for a range of reasons. The first one is this. The Green Party campaigned in 1999 against genetic modification. Fair enough—it is a good slogan, and the party represents the environmentalists. That is great, and I have no argument with that. It is those members’ right to do so. Part of the deal when they came into Government as coalition partners with Labour was to set up a royal commission to look into the whole topic that they had been campaigning against. So the Green Party, along with the Labour Government Ministers, hand-picked the members of the royal commission. One can bet that part of the deal was that the Green Party had a major input into that, and I am sure that Ian Ewen-Street may have had a view on that, as well. That royal commission sat for weeks. It listened to international experts and local experts, scientists, doctors, philosophers, politicians—you name it. It went through an extensive exercise. At the end of it, it came out with four volumes of findings, and the Government implemented what the royal commission recommended.

The Government basically recommended carrying on with what the royal commission recommended. Now, who could argue with that? Surprise, surprise—the Green Party, which recommended that that would be its approach, came out and vigorously opposed what the royal commission put forward. I say to the members of the Green Party that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no applications at all before the Environmental Risk Management Authority, which, arguably, should be the best judge of whether something that could be a risk to our environment—or our future, as the Green Party would put it—should take place. There are no applications before the authority. The authority’s job, and what it is charged to do in life, is to look at every case on its merits. There are no applications before it, and it should look at every case on its merits.

Let us go a little further. What we have seen here today is what the future Government will be like if—God forbid—Labour should win. We have seen a lot of media publicity about the odd spat that we on the right of centre may have from time to time in our ranks. There has been the odd little bit of media publicity about that, but we never ever see reported the absolute fundamental differences that apply here in Parliament between the Greens and the Government. We never ever see that. I say to those who might be listening in radioland that that is an example of what they can expect going forward if—God forbid—Labour should win the next election.

I ask Phil Goff whether he thinks that Keith Locke would make a better Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That is my first question. Does he think that that would be the case? That is probably what will happen. I ask members to think about that for a moment. It is well worth a moment’s thinking about. I think that is a question the public should be asking.

My good colleague Lindsay Tisch, who is a very good whip for the National Party, tells me that there are 3,356 nuclear radiation apparatus licences in New Zealand as we debate today. Presumably there are apparatuses to match the licences—I am not sure. But whether or not that is the case, 3,356 radiation licences are in existence in New Zealand today. So the question is why, if that source of energy is so dreadful, the Green Party, being the principal supporter of the Government, allows those licences to continue. I ask Mr Ian Ewen-Street why the Greens have not got into that. Why have they not fixed that up and cleaned those out? That is a question I want to know the answer to. There is no basis at all for the arguments the Greens put forward—none, zero.

This has turned into a very spirited debate. I commend the Minister for the Environment; I think she gave a spirited speech. We have just heard my very good friend in the National Party, Shane Ardern, make a good contribution. One thing that did disturb me was his comment that he agreed with everything Marian Hobbs said. Although she said some things that were correct, there was one glaring error in her speech. She said that our ban on things nuclear is a ban on weapons and energy, and, of course, she was quite wrong. The 1987 legislation is specific to weapons and propulsion; nothing in the nuclear ban prevents nuclear energy. It is disturbing to realise that our Minister for the Environment does not actually understand that point. But she has come a long way. Once, she upheld the mantra of banning everything nuclear and pretending that New Zealand was nuclear free. Of course, it has not been. Our hospitals deploy nuclear technology, as the Minister herself said.

Then we had the Somers report in 1993. It was 176 pages long. The panel, made up of a retired High Court judge, Edward Somers, and three top scientists—a medical scientist, a physics scientist, and a chemistry scientist—sat for about a year and heard public submissions. The panel’s conclusion was that there was no public safety or environmental reason for not having nuclear-propelled ships visit New Zealand waters. In fact, the panel went on to point out that Auckland Hospital emitted more radiation—twice as much—into the environment every day than the entire US naval fleet and all its support services did in a year. That was in a formal report received by the Government of New Zealand. It just shows us how we have been captured by those mantras.

The bill before us, with the attempt by the Greens to extend the moratorium on genetic modification, is just another one of those bumper stickers. It is a bumper sticker, a mantra, that science just blows out of the water. I am concerned that Mr Ian Ewen-Street put his name to this bill. I would have expected better of him. But he did join the Greens, so that in itself may perhaps explain it. The moratorium was an interesting piece of policy work. A moratorium is really a political solution when something is too hard for a Government—it is a kick for touch. Members will recall that in this instance, for political reasons, the moratorium was extended. But we had a royal commission into genetic modification, and I think that it gave a very good report. I do not agree with all of it, but it was a very thorough report, and there was some very good science in it. The bottom line was that we should proceed with caution. No one can argue against that; I think that with any new technology we should proceed with caution.

Some of the rhetoric that has come from the Greens is nothing other than absolute bunkum. There has been an emphasis on New Zealand’s clean, green, nuclear-free, GM-free label in Europe. Recently, a survey was done on European consumers, and it found they do not give a fig about that; it is a myth that we in New Zealand believe in. As far as the European buyers are concerned, they buy on the basis of price and quality, just as everyone else around the world does. That marketing research was quite clear, and it exposed the Greens’ bunkum for what it is, yet we have heard it here again tonight. The moratorium was extended once, and the Greens now want to reinstate it. That is like putting one’s head in the sand; it is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It is just utter foolishness.

Really, there are some very good reasons why we should be embracing technology. We should be at the forefront of technology. That is where the comparative advantage for New Zealand is, particularly given the scientific basis that underpins our economy in terms of our production from fishing, forestry, and farming. For sound environmental reasons, we should be embracing technology. If we want to reduce our dependency on pesticides—and I think that there are very legitimate concerns about organochlorines and organophosphates—we should be phasing them out, and GM is the technology that best enables us to do that.

New Zealand First will support this legislation going to the Primary Production Committee. But I suggest to people that it will be very much qualified support. If the bill goes to the select committee, then we will be seeking to amend and change it, so that any moratorium would apply only to products that may enter the food chain—in other words, food stuffs—and only for applications for commercial release under those circumstances.

I sat on the select committee that put the moratorium in place, and I chaired the select committee that put the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill through, which made sure that we had things in place once the moratorium came off. So I certainly have listened to many, many hours of submissions on the issues around GE. I make the point that there has been no evidence, either at the royal commission stage, at the stage when the moratorium was put on, or at the stage of the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill, that suggests there are any health risks in the use of GE foods. There is no evidence of that, and I think that point needs to be clearly made. People will say that the research has not been done, but, in fact, a lot of research has been done. There has been some shonky stuff, but no research has demonstrated that there are health risks.

The other thing we need to recognise is that as of September 2003, 21 GE foods had been approved for use in Australia, and, therefore, approved for use in New Zealand. We are eating the stuff, anyhow. That is a point that needs to be made.

Shane Ardern: You’re ruining your argument.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY: That is not, however, the issue, and perhaps if people would listen, they might get the issue. At the select committee, a number of submissions caused us to reflect. Those submissions related to research done in terms of economic modelling. The research was done by reputable researchers such as Dr Caroline Saunders and Business and Economic Research. That modelling suggested, in terms of the behaviour of consumers overseas, that there was a whole range of possible outcomes if New Zealand embraced GE foods. Depending upon the assumptions made in terms of the models, those outcomes varied from a 10 percent premium for New Zealand to anything up to a 30 percent loss of gross national income or overseas trade.

We have to remember that that is theoretical modelling, so it is not actuality. That research demonstrated that we actually do not know what factors will affect consumer behaviour. We know, for example, that consumers in Japan are possibly more resistant than consumers in other parts of the world. Consumers in Europe are certainly more resistant than those in the United States. But we do not actually know what the factors are, at this particular point in time.

New Zealand First has taken the point that it is not actually the reality that is really important here; it is people’s perspectives of the reality. For example, in the Middle Ages people may have thought that the world was flat, but the fact that it was not flat did not make any difference to the fact that they did not take off to go sailing around the world. Because they thought it was flat it influenced their behaviours, and the same goes in terms of the potential effect upon New Zealand’s trade.

We have some evidence that non-food GE products, or the use of them, do not impact on trade in food. That evidence comes from the Australian situation where they have been growing Ingard cotton for some time, but it seems to have had no negative impact upon their trade in relation to food products, etc.

But we also know that in Australia, most states have put moratoriums on the commercial release of food products up to 2008. So we cannot know what the effects of the introduction of those, in terms of their commercial release, will actually be upon the trade of a fairly similar nation to ourselves.

Therefore, New Zealand First asks why we should risk the situation, particularly when we are confronted by the sort of information the Minister gave in the House today—that since the moratorium was lifted, there have been no applications for commercial release of any GE products, let alone food products. Why should we signal to the world that we are ready to go, when there have been no applications for GE field trials or any trials at all. That would suggest to some that possibly there have been some panic merchants out there. So New Zealand First asks why we should risk an impact upon New Zealand’s trade for something that is a long way away, anyhow—probably not until 2008, at least.

New Zealand First has a policy—and it has been a clear policy since we analysed the findings of the royal commission—that claims New Zealand needs to keep its opportunities open. We believe that the technology has potential, particularly in therapeutics, bioremediation, and other aspects, but that we should proceed with extreme caution.

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak on the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill introduced by the honourable member Ian Ewen-Street. I agree that the member has good intentions, perhaps, in introducing this bill, and I respect his deep feelings about this issue, but as another member said earlier, he is simply wrong about GE and about the value of reintroducing a moratorium in this country. United Future will be opposing this bill on its first reading.

The Greens have some mantras and slogans that sound quite nice. They sound as if they could go somewhere, but in actual fact when they are analysed a bit further they turn out to be meaningless statements. What is behind this reintroduction of the moratorium is this mantra of the Greens: to keep it in the laboratory. I want to examine that a little bit tonight, because if we think about it, we realise it is absolutely useless. What is the point of keeping in the laboratory all the research, all the scientific knowledge, that is gained if we can never use it for the benefit of society? If we cannot get it out of the laboratory, why bother having it in there in the first place? Why would we ask people to invest their money into the research necessary in order to discover things that will be safe for the country, safe for the economy, and safe for human consumption, if they can never ever test the results outside the laboratory? So there is an inconsistency there. There is actually a dishonesty, really, about that slogan that says to keep it in the laboratory and it will be OK. I think we need to expose that for what it is.

Secondly, there is an inconsistency and a dishonesty about the Greens’ position on some of these genetic modification issues. The Greens have been very passionate about the genetic modification of plants, but when it came last year to supporting the human assisted reproduction legislation the Green Party supported the genetic modification of human gametes and embryos. I want to read it to the House, so that we are all very clear. They supported a bill that allows for an advisory committee that must, within time frames agreed by the Minister, provide the Minister with information, advice, and, if it thinks fit, without ever referring back to this House, recommendations upon the following matters in relation to gametes and embryos in human reproductive research, cloned embryos, donations of human embryos, genetic modification of human gametes and human embryos.

So I believe there are many people around the country who are asking themselves whether the Green Party is more concerned about genetically modified corn than it is about genetically modified human embryos and human gametes. We need to be consistent if we are to have strongly held beliefs, and I do not believe that the Green Party is being consistent in its philosophy. Its voting record does not show it.

Tonight I want to take the House back to some instances and press releases in 2002, that turbulent period before the last election when the issue of the lifting of the moratorium was paramount on the minds of all Green Party members. Some very, very strong statements were made, as in the Sunday Star-Times on 26 May 2002: “Green co-leader Rod Donald says: ‘For us, it’s a matter of principle. We just couldn’t keep a Government in power that wants to end forever New Zealand being nuclear-free, er, GE-free.’ … The GE policy was a bottom line for the Greens because ‘unlike virtually anything else this one is irreversible.’ When the moratorium on commercial application of GE ended in October 2003, the country would lose its GE-free status forever. Donald admits the strategy is high-risk,”—and, boy, was it ever high-risk—“The voters might revolt against a small party prepared to destroy a Government, but ‘I’d rather risk being wiped out than stand by and watch the environment being wiped out.’ ”

What has happened to that Green Party principle since that time? They just could not keep a Government in power. They would rather have seen a Government destroyed than see GE introduced into our environment, yet we know recently that at their last conference the Greens decided they would abandon that principle in order to be able to pursue power with, hopefully, the future Government of this country—the thought of which we all dread. In the pursuit of power the Greens would be willing to abandon the principle that Rod Donald referred to, and abandon their policy of having a moratorium on this issue.

I take this opportunity to speak on the bill, because I do not agree with it. I have a lot of respect for my friends in the Green Party, and I agree with a lot of the things they say and do. But this is one area where I strongly disagree with the member who proposed this bill. Clearly, I am one of those people who has some understanding of the issues, because I have done a lot of research in agriculture, particularly in the area of cropping. New Zealand, as we know, has done a lot of research and taken the lead, both locally and internationally, in developing a lot of technologies. We are an exporter of many of those technologies and have done very well in promoting and exporting crop seeds, animals, and animal and crop products over the years. I believe that for this country to survive economically and to raise our standard of living we have to be ahead of other competitors in the world in terms of creating new knowledge, better technologies, and better systems. We need to do this to increase productivity on the farm and to be able to export more and better quality products to the rest of the world.

Ian Ewen-Street: That’s rubbish.

Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY: It is totally right, I say to my friend. I have been part of it. We have been developing these technologies for over 100 years, and we have taken the lead in many of the technologies used in farming today.

I think that what my friend Ian Ewen-Street is proposing is a backward step. Clearly, we have to do the science in this country. We have to be at the cutting edge of the technologies in order to understand the new frontiers of product development in this country. If we do not have that opportunity to develop new technologies, if we let other people take those technologies, develop them, and have the patents, we can never compete with them. The way the world is going ahead, today only two or three major international companies are producing seed, for example. They will have the patents and the copyright for that seed, and they are the ones that will benefit. If we are left behind, there is no way we will be able to compete, because we are basically an agricultural country.

We had the opportunity, through the moratorium, for quite a while to try to get consensus among ourselves in this country, and particularly to bring our scientists with us. We had that opportunity. We discussed the issues thoroughly, locally and internationally, and we came up with the view that we need to have a case by case situation and look at what is appropriate for our conditions and our environment—at what we should be developing to suit our environment and our agriculture. To say that we in this country should not do the research, should not test any of the new seeds, and should not look at new organisms is totally a backward step. The Greens wish to keep a cleaner, greener environment, and we are all for that, but unless we have the leading edge in developing technology we will not be able to add value to what we export to the rest of the world.

I have done a lot of research on trying to understand the pitfalls and the disadvantages of having, for example, GE seeds. I have never, to my understanding, read any research papers—papers that are peer reviewed—from anywhere in the world that say, for example, that genetically modified seeds are no good. There is no study that suggests any adverse impact on the environment. There is no study that shows any adverse impact on human health or animal health. [Interruption] I ask that member to show me some research. A whole lot of studies are mentioned in the newspapers, but there is nothing to say that this is any worse.

I would like to congratulate Ian Ewen-Street on his good fortune. Of course, getting a bill drawn from the ballot is purely a matter of luck, but the fact that the bill was written is due to Ian’s good management. The Green Party wants New Zealand’s GE-free status to be due to good management, too, rather than good luck. We had good management when we had a moratorium. Fortunately, good luck is still on our side.

As a former organic farmer, Ian understands better than most of us how crucial it is for New Zealand to remain GE free. We are a small nation at the bottom of the world and we must differentiate ourselves from the crowd in order to survive. That means identifying unique selling points to make our products more desirable than our competitors’ and ensuring that our visitor experience is unsurpassed. As Ian said, New Zealand has found that niche. We brand ourselves clean, green, and “100% Pure”. It is our good fortune that we have so many natural advantages over other countries. It would be appallingly bad management if we were to stuff up those advantages. That is why we want to give this Parliament another chance to protect our advantages, by reinstating the moratorium on the commercial release of genetically engineered organisms.

Whether or not this bill passes, we are proud of the fact that our campaigning efforts put GE on hold for long enough to stop the disastrous release of GE canola, probably forever. That application was in the pipeline in 1999 but it did not proceed, because our petition—which gathered 92,000 signatures asking for a moratorium and a royal commission of inquiry—was heeded by the incoming Government. The royal commission disappointingly failed to engage properly with the science of GE, but it provided the breathing space that allowed us to learn from overseas experience.

It is now blindingly obvious that there is no possible way to stop the spread of GE canola pollen and seed. That means GE canola will never be approved under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. That counts as a victory. New Zealand is still GE free in the sense that there has been no release of such organisms into the environment or into New Zealand - grown food. We acknowledge and congratulate the thousands of people who made that possible by making submissions and marching in the streets.

Reinstating the moratorium will not prevent the many useful applications of genetic engineering that do not require release into the environment and into our food chain. Laboratory-based genetics is vital in exploring why particular strains of crops have particular characteristics and then using this information to improve and short-cut natural selective breeding. It is vital that we continue to improve the genetics of our commercial plants and animals and that the technology is available to use genetic science to do this without creating transgenic organisms.

Nor will this bill stop the majority of medical applications of GE, because they do not require the release of a living organism into the environment either. GE insulin, relied on by many diabetics, is produced by bacteria engineered with a human gene. Those bacteria are never released from the laboratory. The insulin is purified from the bacterial culture, tested, and released as a medicine. It is not alive and cannot reproduce. This is the sort of smart science that the Greens support. It is not totally without risk, but the risks can be controlled, and the benefits outweigh them.

The risk now is not primarily from GE food crops, which have been shown to have little, if anything, to offer anyone in New Zealand—even the royal commission acknowledged that. The risk comes from this Government’s infatuation with the concept of medicines produced in food crops—potatoes containing vaccines, and cows producing human proteins in their milk. This is a serious danger to our food exports, because no one will believe that we can keep them 100 percent separate. Ian’s bill would be the best protection we could have against those risks. But if it does not pass its first reading today it is not the end. The Greens, along with the GE-free movement, will continue to monitor applications and alert the public when our well-being is threatened. Thousands of New Zealanders have shown that they will respond to the call if anyone is foolish enough to put our national security at risk.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not want to interrupt the member when he was speaking, but on a number of occasions during his speech he referred to the sponsor of the bill in very familiar terms. As I understand Speakers’ rulings, we refer to members by either their electorate or their full name, certainly not by their first name. I wonder, given the fact that you did not pull the member up, whether there has been a change in that state of affairs.

It was remiss of me not to call Mr Rod Donald to order on each occasion when he did that. I thank the member for raising that point. There has been no change in the Chamber.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise. I would be very happy to read the speech out again using Ian’s full name—Ian Ewen-Street.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I thank the member for that.

I seek leave for the co-leader of the Greens to have a further 10-minute slot at 5 past 10 to reread the speech that he has just read.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): No, no.

This bill, which has been drawn from the members’ ballot, seeks to relitigate what this nation has been through ad nauseam over a very long period of time following the very lengthy Royal Commission on Genetic Modification.

GE issues are difficult, and serious health and safety issues do arise. There are difficult technical and scientific issues that are beyond the ability of many people to grasp, because they do not have the training in the sciences that they need in order to get down properly to the nitty-gritty of the issues.

The Government has all along taken the approach that issues like those, which are so technically difficult, ought to be decided through a robust process. That process started through the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, which was chaired by a High Court judge and which included representatives of the scientific community, of ethicists—namely, a minister of religion—and of representatives of tangata whenua. Their very, very lengthy hearings and processes were thorough, and anyone was able to submit to them.

Ian Ewen-Street: That’s not true.

DAVID PARKER: I am sorry, but it is true. I know of no one who was prevented from submitting, and I know from having read many of the submissions that the full breadth of opinion was presented to the royal commission.

I have no doubt that the commissioners were very well informed before they made the recommendations to Government that they did. The commission’s main recommendation was to proceed with a very strict regulatory regime but not totally to ban the potential future release of genetically modified organisms. Its recommendation was adopted by the Government. That recommendation was also the issue that was at the fore during the last election, which this Government won, so there is a mandate for the policy that has been put in place by this Government.

It is worth noting the protections that are needed for the environment. I am one of those people who acknowledges that serious issues need to be addressed if and when any application is made for the release of a GE plant. But mechanisms are available through the Environmental Risk Management Authority, and the legislation that created it, to take properly into account the concerns that any interest group against the release of such plants might like to raise.

There were criticisms about the robustness of the authority’s processes. Again, those criticisms were highlighted by independent reviews and were not covered up. They were taken into account by the Government when it imposed an even stricter regime on the authority—so strict that one of the questions in the House today attacked the Government for the fact that the rules have become so strict no one can ever negotiate their way through them—that rather than being too lax, they are too strict.

I am comfortable with where we are at, as a Government. We have a very strict regime under the Environmental Risk Management Authority. I do not want to relitigate what this Government and the public worked out in the 3 years prior to the last election, so I for one will be voting against this bill.

I rise to support—

Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that when we are debating members’ bills we follow the format. This speech should be the right of reply for the Green Party.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you for raising that issue. A number of speeches can take place. There is one speech short; Mr Locke is quite correct. On top of that, the member who introduced the bill may reply if he wishes to, but I will not bring it to his notice as he has already indicated he is aware of that.

KEITH LOCKE: I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill. It is good that there are three Green Party speakers because, as other participants in the debate have recognised, it is an issue of great importance to the Green Party—and not just for the Green Party, as a party with nine seats in a House of 120 seats, but for a majority of New Zealanders. All the polls that have been taken show that the majority of our population—70 percent in one recent poll, and I have also heard the figure of 67 percent; there are all types of figures, but they are generally around 60 or 70 percent—do not want the release of GE organisms in our crops, our food chain, and our environment. That is the reality. So it is not as if the Greens are fighting against a big tide, which is the impression people might get by listening to the debate in Parliament; the Green Party is surfing at the front of the tide of New Zealand’s popular opinion.

New Zealanders were upset when the moratorium was lifted, because we wanted to maintain our GE-free status. New Zealanders are not stupid. The arguments given by Ian Ewen-Street in his introductory 10-minute speech are common-sense arguments, such as the argument he used about genetics. When I studied high school genetics, and when I spent 2 years at university studying zoology, it was quite clear to me that genes had multiple effects. Not only do genes have multiple effects but the effects they have depend on the context of other genes, and everyone has a different set of “other genes”.

As well, the context varies according to the particular environment. We all know that genes express themselves differently at different times of the year. That is the secret of the cycle of life. The climate changes and genes express themselves in a certain way so that flowers grow. Autumn comes along and genes express themselves in other ways. So it is an area where there cannot be a one-to-one relationship of genes to outcomes, which is what a lot of people who promote genetic engineering say.

Dr Choudhary said that there is no science that proves negative effects. I think, though, that there is some science available about rogue GE weeds and crops taking over some of the countryside and pushing aside other crops, and that that science makes absolute sense. If crops are being bred to be Roundup or herbicide-resistant, or even pesticide-resistant, obviously crops are being developed that might get out of hand. If a crop turns into some hybrid with another weed, there will obviously be a super-weed development. The super-weed will then be Roundup-resistant. Or if a plant is bred to be resistant to certain insects, and then spreads or mutates, it could be difficult to use insecticides on it effectively. So that is the problem.

There is also the intention of some of those companies using genetic engineering to benefit their own interests at the expense of the community’s interest. Recently there has been the whole issue of terminator seeds. Certainly, people have said that outside of GE crops some hybrids do not reproduce. That is true. But the GE food manufacturers are producing seeds specifically through genetic engineering as terminator seeds—not to benefit people as a whole but to benefit their own profits. That is what it is about. People now have to buy seeds from such companies every year and they cannot collect seeds for replanting.

I was not going to mention the royal commission, but my friend and colleague David Parker made a statement that I cannot allow to go by. He said that he did not know of anybody who had been refused permission to make a presentation orally to the royal commission.

David Parker: I didn’t.

IAN EWEN-STREET: Actually, the member did. I will tell the House a little story about myself. In making a submission to the royal commission, people had to make it clear that they had an interest greater than that of the general public. I applied. I was called before the royal commission. I said that I was an organic farmer and my livelihood was at risk. I said that I was elected to Parliament on the basis of my opposition to genetic engineering and that I thought I had an interest greater than that of the general public. The commission said: “No, you don’t. You can’t make an oral submission.” I discovered that after calling for submissions the commission decided that no individual could make an oral submission—not one. So there were 11,000 people who wanted to make submissions and who made written submissions. About 9,500 of those people could not make an oral submission—[Interruption] I am afraid that that is what Mr Parker said.

Much has been made about the Greens being closed-minded about genetic engineering—that we are a flat earth society reborn, or whatever the phrase is. I am a trained scientist and I like to think that I do have an open mind about this. Genetic engineering is not the way to go. We have never said anything about medicines. We are not saying that we should not use genetic engineering in the laboratory as a way of increasing scientific knowledge. If people are sick, then I think it is incumbent on us to use whatever means we have at our disposal to help them get better. If that includes GE, that is just fine. Our concern is about releasing live, reproducing new species into our fragile and vulnerable ecosystems. Every time we come into New Zealand through the airports, we get checked for biosecurity products. People bringing food products, seeds, or anything like that into this country are stopped at the border and relieved of them. What people fail to recognise is that although we spend hundreds of millions of dollars keeping alien species out of our ecosystems at the border, genetic engineering is creating new species—and we know they are new species, because the makers have kindly patented them. One can only patent something if it is new.

So what we are doing is introducing alien species. We are putting a biosecurity risk into our ecosystems on a commercial scale. That is what we did with rabbits and possums in the early days. We thought then that we knew what we were doing, but, clearly, in retrospect we did not know what we were doing. Possums are the greatest single threat to the economy of this country. If foot and mouth disease came into the country, obviously the economy would go down the gurgler. We do not know what the impact of these alien species will be on our farming ecosystems. We do not, and cannot, know.

New Zealand is GE free, despite the best efforts of the Government. It has not been able to convince anyone to actually try to have a commercial release, and the reason is that as soon as something like that happens, 70 percent of the population out there will rise up in civil disobedience and pull out those crops. That is what the Government knows, and what it does not want. That is also what the foreign companies know, and that is why we have not had any applications through the Environmental Risk Management Authority. It is not because it is a robust regulatory authority, as the Government likes to tell us; it is because companies know that the people of New Zealand simply do not want it.

When I look at the National Party in the Chamber, I see a party in total disarray. It is looking at electoral oblivion, but here we have a subject area that has 70 percent support in the community. Surely there is some grain of intelligence in the party that says: “Hey, here is an issue that’s ready made. We’ve got a constituency out there. The Greens have proved it’s 70 percent. If we adopted it, maybe we’d be the Government next time.” [Interruption]

It is a tradition in this Parliament for bills to be read a first time so they can be recommended to select committees and debated properly. I sincerely trust that members in the House will vote accordingly.