Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
[Volume:611;Page:8347] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Government’s policy on genetic engineering is a shambles. It is beset by contradictions in the statements of Ministers. This Government has made it a bottom line to lift the moratorium on the release of genetic engineering and to allow its 
release into our farms and our environment and it thinks there will be huge economic benefit from doing that. But the Minister for the Environment 
says there will be no applications for years. It is hard to see where the benefits from lifting the moratorium will come from if there are not going to be any applications. 
The Minister says that if there are any releases for food crops then she will probably “do it for them” by which we take it to mean she will call them in under the Act and make the decision herself. But she confirmed in the House this afternoon that there is no policy on this call-in; it will be case by case decision-making. It is not clear whether this case by case decision-making will be because the Government does not actually have confidence in the Environmental Risk Management Authority to make those decisions or because of recognition that the commercial release of GE is a political minefield and might need to be managed politically. The Minister says that Monsanto’s crops will not get approval for general release but pine trees might because they are not food but there appears to be no policy on food versus other crops. She says the call-in will be on a case by case basis but assures us it will not be for political reasons. She knows that the public has huge concern especially around crops like corn wheat and potatoes. However this will not be a political decision. The Minister says that she has complete and absolute faith in the Environmental Risk Management Authority but it seems that she is not prepared to leave decisions to it if they are politically sensitive. She says that she has complete faith in the Environmental Risk Management Authority but the review of the authority’s capabilities found some glaring and gross inadequacies that now need to be fixed. 
The select committee that has just reported back the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill got a paper from the Environmental Risk Management Authority in which it had set out clause by clause its responses to the 49 recommendations of the review. It does not make reassuring reading. Let me quote: “There has been a reallocation of responsibilities between the authority and the board.”—good; that was overdue but to what effect for what purpose and with what result we are not told. The authority has overhauled its meeting procedures but what the purpose of that was we do not know either. The group has set up some non-governmental organisation consultative groups to address the problem that submitters do not trust the process or the agency but the minutes of one of those meetings show simply that there was a lecture from the authority on what its purpose role and functions were and the non-governmental organisations do not seem to be taking up the opportunity to go to those meetings. 
The prime answer on a recommendation about the standard of proof needed in decision making which is a key issue in the accountability of the Environmental Risk Management Authority was we were told that this was “a matter of continuing discussion internally”. The select committee was not a great deal the wiser as to how the Environmental Risk Management Authority has fixed those glaring problems on being told that it was “a matter of continuing discussion internally”! We are told that a new structure was recommended by the review team but not what it is going to achieve or how things have changed on the ground as a result of it. 
Finally in response to the serious concern of the review that reliance on agency relationships between the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to deliver core services creates risks that the other agencies’ priorities might precede those of the Environmental Risk Management Authority—they also said this was the prime risk to the environment posed by the regulatory system—the Environmental Risk Management Authority simply replied: “These changes will further develop a cooperative arrangement that already functions very effectively.” We are not reassured.