Donald Rod: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donald Rod: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms Moratorium Reinstatement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19295] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I would like to congratulate Ian Ewen-Street on his good fortune. Of course getting a bill drawn from the ballot is purely a matter of luck but the fact that the bill was written is due to Ian’s good management. The Green Party wants New Zealand’s GE-free status to be due to good management too rather than good luck. We had good management when we had a moratorium. Fortunately good luck is still on our side. 
As a former organic farmer Ian understands better than most of us how crucial it is for New Zealand to remain GE free. We are a small nation at the bottom of the world and we must differentiate ourselves from the crowd in order to survive. That means identifying unique selling points to make our products more desirable than our competitors’ and ensuring that our visitor experience is unsurpassed. As Ian said New Zealand has found that niche. We brand ourselves clean green and “100% Pure”. It is our good fortune that we have so many natural advantages over other countries. It would be appallingly bad management if we were to stuff up those advantages. That is why we want to give this Parliament another chance to protect our advantages by reinstating the moratorium on the commercial release of genetically engineered organisms. 
Whether or not this bill passes we are proud of the fact that our campaigning efforts put GE on hold for long enough to stop the disastrous release of GE canola probably forever. That application was in the pipeline in 1999 but it did not proceed because our petition—which gathered 92000 signatures asking for a moratorium and a royal commission of inquiry—was heeded by the incoming Government. The royal commission disappointingly failed to engage properly with the science of GE but it provided the breathing space that allowed us to learn from overseas experience. 
It is now blindingly obvious that there is no possible way to stop the spread of GE canola pollen and seed. That means GE canola will never be approved under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. That counts as a victory. New Zealand is still GE free in the sense that there has been no release of such organisms into the environment or into New Zealand - grown food. We acknowledge and congratulate the thousands of people who made that possible by making submissions and marching in the streets. 
Reinstating the moratorium will not prevent the many useful applications of genetic engineering that do not require release into the environment and into our food chain. Laboratory-based genetics is vital in exploring why particular strains of crops have particular characteristics and then using this information to improve and short-cut natural selective breeding. It is vital that we continue to improve the genetics of our commercial plants and animals and that the technology is available to use genetic science to do this without creating transgenic organisms. 
Nor will this bill stop the majority of medical applications of GE because they do not require the release of a living organism into the environment either. GE insulin relied on by many diabetics is produced by bacteria engineered with a human gene. Those bacteria are never released from the laboratory. The insulin is purified from the bacterial culture tested and released as a medicine. It is not alive and cannot reproduce. This is the sort of smart science that the Greens support. It is not totally without risk but the risks can be controlled and the benefits outweigh them. 
The risk now is not primarily from GE food crops which have been shown to have little if anything to offer anyone in New Zealand—even the royal commission acknowledged that. The risk comes from this Government’s infatuation with the concept of medicines produced in food crops—potatoes containing vaccines and cows producing human proteins in their milk. This is a serious danger to our food exports because no one will believe that we can keep them 100 percent separate. Ian’s bill would be the best protection we could have against those risks. But if it does not pass its first reading today it is not the end. The Greens along with the GE-free movement will continue to monitor applications and alert the public when our well-being is threatened. Thousands of New Zealanders have shown that they will respond to the call if anyone is foolish enough to put our national security at risk.