Browning Steffan: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5622. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. This year the 2015-16 appropriation for the Primary Growth Partnership was $69.8 million almost $70 million. I want to discuss tonight a recipient of Primary Growth Partnership money PGG Wrightson Seeds and touch on the national policy statement on plantation forestry which the Ministry for Primary Industries has been road-showing recently and the very unfortunate direction that this Government appears to be heading in with agricultural research biotechnology and loss of community choice. As I point out the toxic direction of current AgResearch in New Zealand we must be mindful that there is a fantastic opportunity in organic agriculture that can be very profitable for “New Zealand Inc.” while mitigating much of our greenhouse gas emissions and reducing nutrient leaching. It will be hundreds of percent better than conventional methods in product value in dairy alone.PGG Wrightson has said that it wants to compete with GE giant Monsanto and it has been on that path since Dr Allan Freeth the next chief executive of the Environmental Protection Authority set it on that path when he was chief executive officer and managing director of PGG Wrightson. He also got PGG Wrightson to buy into Genesis which was experimenting with GE grasses and was working with ArborGen on GE trees an unusual appointment for the arbitrator of GE in our environment. PGG Wrightson developed herbicide-tolerant swedes with Dupont and a couple of failed GE scientists—scientists who had happily broken the important conditions of the previous GE field trials that the Environmental Protection Authority had set and had assured us that those conditions would deal with any risks. But those scientists happily broke those conditions.PGG Wrightson and the scientists thought that they were really clever and used chemical mutagenesis instead of GE. They did both actually but they popped the other ones out in the market so that they could avoid regulatory oversight and avoid safety tests and the apparently irksome conditions of use. The unexpected happened as can occur with GE and other DNA-disruptive technologies such as that chemical mutagenesis. Hundreds of cows and sheep died and many more were sick because in part it appears that there was an unexpected increase of up to 16 times the natural toxin. A dangerous and unexpected result from a non-regulated technology that is based on the use of three herbicides and DNA disruption—nothing sustainable. That is PGG Wrightson’s direction and this Government is funding Chinese-owned PGG Wrightson for more of the same but funding almost zilch for the organics.I want to touch on the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry. I note that somehow the Governmentwants through the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry to bring in GE trees if the Environmental Protection Authority headed byPGG Wrightson apromoter of GE trees and grasses—it wants to allow GE trees to be decided by only that arbitrator the Environmental Protection Authority and it has made loads of mistakes in the past. I can go through every one of them if necessary. In every field trial that the Environmental Risk Management Authority now the Environmental Protection Authority has done in recent years the major condition of consent for approval has been breached and yet this Government says through that national environment standard that local councils and local communities will not be able to decide for their own region whether the Environmental Protection Authority should grant genetically engineered trees. It looks like a cook-up.Our communities want to be able to sell top-notch product overseas as GM-free and from areas such as Hawke’s Bay. Pure Hawke’s Bay reckons that $100 billion—sorry $1 billion—[Interruption] Yes yes I am getting my figures. One of the producers is working on $100 million on its own but $1 billion of product from the Hawke’s Bay is going out as being from GM-free Hawke’s Bay. How can that carry on if this Government—