Donnelly Brian: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Donnelly Brian: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8586] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Speaker and I thank Dr Paul Hutchison very much. It is very much appreciated and I thank members of the House. I understand from Jeanette Fitzsimons that there is no protocol so I am very appreciative. 
From the time the bill was sent to the Education and Science Committee I certainly knew that there was a great probability we were in for some fun and games—and there were some fun and games. There were issues of members of the public having to be ejected. [ 
Interruption 
] In fact the Mothers Against Genetic Engineering organisation did not turn up to the select committee to speak to their written submission. They were invited to but did not turn up. They turned up today. 
I make the point that I was determined right from the word go that we would not turn this process into a circus and we would not relitigate the royal commission. I thank the members of the select committee very much for supporting me in that determination by ensuring that we focused upon the legislation and the task in hand. We saw an example here today of exactly the kind of circus the select committee could have been turned into—but it was not. Concerning those people who scream about democratic rights—that they should have the right to come along and talk—I tell the House that Mothers Against Genetic Engineering were invited to make an oral submission but they did not appear. Yet their members appeared here today. For a moment I thought that they had confused the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill with the “New Orgasms and Other Matters Bill”. 
One of the reasons there was so much strong feeling about this legislation was that people had got the story wrong. They thought that this bill was lifting the moratorium—and that was totally incorrect. The 2002 amendment legislation put a moratorium on for a certain time and after that period of time was up—poof!—it disappeared. This legislation will put in place or attempt to put in place mechanisms for a more robust regulatory environment for when the moratorium goes poof and disappears. 
It seemed totally irresponsible ignorant or stupid of people to try to gum up the works so that the select committee could not get through its particular task. When 29 October comes if this legislation is not in place or has not been passed in some form or other we are back to the status quo. The select committee asked—and I asked—officials time and time again how we could put something into this bill if it wished to extend the moratorium or wanted to have something in there as a partial extension. They could not give us that information and the general advice we got from them was that it was beyond the scope of the bill. That does not mean to say that we cannot attempt to do some of those things at the Committee of the whole House stage. However what was important was that we could not play silly games with the legislation at the select committee stage report it back after 29 October to embarrass the Government—purely and simply to do that—and leave ourselves in a very awful mess. 
There was also some misapprehension about the parliamentary process. People seemed to believe that they should have the right to talk to the select committee on anything they liked rather than address the bill itself and that that was their democratic right. I put it to the House that if somebody had made a submission on the Kyoto Protocol and had believed they had a right to address the select committee I do not believe that that would have been proper. Therefore the select committee set the rules and stuck by them fairly rigidly to ensure that the circus was not allowed to take place. 
I certainly have to give due regard to members of the select committee because although they had differing views they took a very professional approach to this legislation. It was a time that even though members recognised and respected the different views people had it was necessarily acknowledged there was an imperative to advance this legislation appropriately. 
It was New Zealand First votes that put on the moratorium; it was not Green votes that put it on. If members recall at the third reading of the bill that created the moratorium the Greens abstained and walked out. New Zealand First agreed to the moratorium because we believed that there needed to be a period of time for the Government to put in place what the royal commission was asking to be put in place. But we always said that we would reassess whether the Government had taken all necessary steps at the time the moratorium was to expire. New Zealand First has done that. Our party has looked at it and asked how far the Government has progressed the regulatory framework. 
We believe that the conditional release category is absolutely critical. It is an absolutely important step in order to go forward so that we can move into some of the areas that have the greatest potential and promise—for example the “biopharming” area pest control etc. We believe that it is necessary for that category to be there. But we asked ourselves a question about the issue of foodstuffs. We looked at what was there and I must point to the Cabinet minute that noted: “The modelling results suggest that the release of GM organisms closer to the human food chain poses greater economic risks than releases for medical or pest control purposes.” So once we start to get into anything that will go into the human food chain we are starting to get into the area of risk and we have to ask ourselves whether the mechanism is robust enough to manage that risk—particularly in view of the fact that New Zealand is so dependent upon exported foodstuffs for its economic well-being. Is the mechanism strong enough? We have to ask ourselves that question. 
We have come to the conclusion that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has not convinced us that the economic modelling from the authority is powerful enough at the moment. That same view seems to have been taken by Cabinet because in the policy paper I am talking about it is agreed that further work is to be undertaken by the Environmental Risk Management Authority in consultation with relevant departments on how it would approach its assessment of economic impacts within the context of the proposed coexistent mechanisms. Even the Government is not absolutely convinced that we are safe enough to make those sorts of decisions. 
I point also to the answer given by the Minister Marian Hobbs in the House the other day. She said that if an application comes in concerning foodstuffs at the time the moratorium is to expire it is almost certain that the Minister will use the ministerial call-in. One has to ask why the Minister is automatically going to use the ministerial call-in if there is not an element of anxiety and insecurity about any application that might come in for foodstuffs. New Zealand First will try to move an amendment in the Committee stage for the moratorium to be extended just in that area. Let me tell the House that if we are not able to achieve that we will bring in legislation to introduce a new moratorium for that category of applications. 
I might add that an article by Dr Tony Conner states that we will not have any applications for at least 2 years anyhow so why should we risk a negative perception of our food exports purely and simply on applications that will not come? They are mythical at this stage and we may as well be upfront. 
The other area we are concerned about is that of local government. We were disappointed that Local Government New Zealand reported to the select committee that it had not been consulted. Albeit that the Government may have made a decision that the Environmental Risk Management Authority and its decisions were to be completely free of the Resource Management Act and local government it would have been much more pertinent to have gone through the consultative mode. Now we are left in a situation whereby local government bodies are able to impose GMO-free areas but if they actually insist upon doing that they will probably be sued and almost certainly lose. It is not exactly an ideal situation. Let us be quite clear about that. Let us make the matter quite clear one way or the other and have it clarified. 
Finally I will comment on the ministerial call-in powers over spiritual matters. What are we into now? We are into Druidism. That is potentially what we are into here—animism Druidism whatever one names it. The ministerial call-in powers are questionable anyhow. 
Simon Power 
: What’s Druidism? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: Has the member never read the Asterix stories about the golden sickle and all that sort of stuff?