Ewen-Street Ian: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ewen-Street Ian: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19298] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 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 11000 people who wanted to make submissions and who made written submissions. About 9500 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.