Fitzsimons Jeanette: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:8934] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I would like to speak on the five amendments in my name that are on the Table at the moment. The first is on Supplementary Order Paper 150. This amendment inserts new clause 6A which rewrites paragraph (e) of section 6 of the Act. It is a relatively small and narrow amendment to the Act but it fills I think an important gap. Section 6(e) is about matters relevant to the purpose of the Act and it states that the Environmental Risk Management Authority must consider economic benefit. At the time that the 1996 Act was drafted it was assumed that the environmental and health effects of new organisms might perhaps be negative that the economic effects of new organisms would be positive and that the Environmental Risk Management Authority was going to have to weigh up one against the other. It was not really envisaged at that time that the economic effects of releasing GE could themselves be negative in some circumstances so we have only economic benefits and not economic costs. 
We know now that it is quite possible to have severe economic costs from the release of genetically engineered organisms and that those costs to the economy are not the same as the financial effects on the person actually releasing the organism. So my amendment simply adds in costs to benefits and requires the authority to assess economic benefits and costs and in the process it applies to hazardous substances as well as to new organisms and I think that is an advantage as well. So I would commend that particular amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 150 to the Committee. 
I refer now to Supplementary Order Paper 149. The first amendment inserts new clause 6B which amends the section of the Act that deals with the precautionary approach. The Government has been talking about this constantly. If it has been saying anything about this bill it is that it is taking a very cautious approach but the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act states that a cautious approach is optional. It is not actually required that the Environmental Risk Management Authority take a cautious approach at all. It actually states that the authority should take into account the need for caution. If ever there was a prevarication that is one. 
The Act is actually based on an approach to risk that decides how much risk is acceptable and it requires therefore an ability to calculate the likely consequences of doing something and the likely probabilities of doing something and weigh up whether that outcome is acceptable. But one actually cannot do that if the risks are not known in advance. We are dealing here not with risk and probability so much as with uncertainty and in fact ignorance. In the face of uncertainty and ignorance about the likely effects of a new organism what we need is caution. 
So my amendment adopts wording from the Rio declaration of 1992—signed by the Government of New Zealand I have to say. It has similar wording to that used in the Fisheries Act which is law in New Zealand now and it makes the precautionary approach mandatory by stating: “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage lack of full scientific certainty must not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”. That is standard wording used for the precautionary approach in many parts of the world in many bits of legislation. 
The second amendment set out on that Supplementary Order Paper is to clause 18. The amendment addresses the concerns of the many local authorities who came and spoke to the select committee and said that they wanted to have a say about whether GMOs could be released in their area. So it simply provides that when the authority has agreed to a release then the applicant must also get the consent of the local authorities administering the areas where they want to release it before that can occur. That is in the spirit of the Local Government Act which devolves authority and decision making to local authorities and puts them in charge of looking after the well-being of their people which is what local government was asking the select committee for. 
The third amendment simply extends the expiry clause of the moratorium and of the other matters that expire at the same time. It is not commonly realised that it is not just the moratorium that expires on 29 October but also a number of very important conditions around the use of living vaccines—animal and human vaccines that are themselves living organisms.