Tanczos Nandor: Standards and Conformance Bill — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Standards and Conformance Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:1025] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports this bill going to a select committee but we do so with a word of caution. On the face of it the bill seems entirely innocuous—and in fact it probably is—but we are also aware that it is being introduced under urgency in this House just before the Christmas break and within an international context of tension over how Governments should assess and regulate risk in relation to industry and laboratory standards. 
The aim of the bill is to ensure that the functions of the Standards Council and the Testing Laboratory Registration Council are aligned with international norms and practices. That seems to be an admirable intention but what do we mean when we talk about international norms? Are we talking about the norms of Europe when Europe is taking an increasingly cautionary approach towards chemical and biological risk or are we talking about the norms of the United States of America when according to some US commentators the US has become increasingly paralysed by a deliberate industry strategy of manufactured uncertainty? The concern is that the approach of the joint accreditation system of Australia and New Zealand which this bill will lock into place may well follow in the footsteps of the United States given the very strong identification with US policy that currently dominates Australian politics. It will be of no surprise to members of this House that once again New Zealand’s status in that body is not that of an equal and sovereign nation but is more akin to a slightly favoured federal state. New Zealand would be bound by this legislation to implement the decisions that the Australians by their superior voting power choose. 
Why should that concern us? Let us look at what is actually happening in the United States in relation to regulation. In December 2000 its Data Quality Act was enacted quietly as 27 lines in a giant Budget bill. The Act charged the Government to create procedures to ensure and maximise the quality objectivity utility and integrity of scientific information and statistics disseminated by federal agencies. So dozens of US Government agencies now struggle to translate that language into thousands of pages of quality control guidelines 
That would appear to be a laudable objective but the problem is that the bill has opened the door to a massive industry onslaught on the regulations governing hazardous chemicals in the United States and United States industry has adopted a self-proclaimed policy of using doubts and uncertainty to paralyse its regulatory agencies. By using shonky science and poorly implemented replication studies—which as a result of their poor implementation fail to support primary research—and by using blanket denials industry has managed to stave off regulation on the basis that the scientific evidence is contested. Members have only to turn their minds to the very deliberate strategy of the tobacco industry internationally which has used shonky science and poor replication studies in order to confuse the link between smoking and ill health. Well the Data Quality Act takes that kind of deception to a whole new level because it allows US companies and industry to take court action in order to contest the quality of scientific information thus hamstringing the ability of industries to regulate by locking them up in legal logjams. As a result regulatory agencies have become paralysed in the United States. 
The relevance of that situation to this debate is the concern that we do not open the door to a similar manipulation of regulations in this country inadvertently. If we turn to the bill and look at new section 10(2)(ca) inserted by clause 7(2) we see that the provision allows the Standards Council to recommend specifications other than standards. We have to question what the aim of that provision actually is because as the explanatory note tells us those specifications will not be subject to the same “consultation requirement in section 10(3)” that attaches to standards—because the requirements are not standards; they are specifications. I think that that should make members of this House sit up and take notice and they should ask what the purpose is of doing that. Is it a way of avoiding that consultation? 
Perhaps that is being all too suspicious and perhaps this is a totally innocuous if not laudable bill so the Green Party will support the bill going to a select committee. But we are simply using this speech to alert members to the very significant issues that arise in the process of looking through the specific details of this bill and to alert members on the committee the bill goes to that they should pay attention to the significant hidden barbs that might well be buried in the small bill before them.