Shirley Ken: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
Shirley Ken: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:8927] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 The ACT party supports this legislation and in particular Part 1 which has but two clauses—that is the commencement and the purpose. We support the bill though with some considerable reservation. 
Our position is that we did not favour the moratorium in the first instance. We believed it was unnecessary. The Government of the day sought to put in place a moratorium which is actually an admission of political failure—an inability to grasp the issues before the Parliament or the Government. It is a kick for touch and it was done as we all know as a political manoeuvre in this instance. 
Notwithstanding that I acknowledge the very good work that has been done by the select committee and I acknowledge Mr Donnelly because I have heard some very good reports on the very thorough job done on this bill. I am sure that it has been improved in many respects. 
The commencement clause of course is very critical when one talks about legislation that is effectively coming out of a moratorium situation so commencement becomes very important indeed and I see no reason whatsoever to delay it further. I know there have been all sorts of campaigns and the Green Party and others have been deeply involved with those trying virtually to have an infinite moratorium. I think their preferred position would be to have the moratorium extended forever. That clearly will not happen. Others are lobbying hard to have food exempted and that would require qualified moratoriums that were ongoing. 
I have looked at that position rather closely and spoken with the many groups and it seems that they are really coming from a position of marketing and labelling—market perception. The people I have spoken to have no objection to the science at all but they fear that their customer base either in Europe or Asia may be averse to it. They want to paint themselves with and ride on the label of the clean green New Zealand image. They feel that if the GM-status of New Zealand changed it could jeopardise that image. 
I do not believe that is so. An interesting marketing survey that was recently done—I think Otago University carried it out as I recall—clearly showed in fact that that is most unlikely to be the case. As we know Europe has substantial GE-food products and indeed has a threshold level I think of 0.5 under the European standards so it really becomes a labelling issue as much as anything. It is time for New Zealand to move on. 
On that point I say that this Government has been exposed for its ridiculous policy of zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is a nonsense. The Minister knows that. I know she does and in appearances at the select committee has made it quite clear that the Government has put itself in a very awkward position by trying to cling to the pretence that it has zero tolerance when that clearly defies scientific reality. 
I note the streamlining of the importation of organisms of low risk. That is a useful improvement to the bill. I think that a lot of other measures could have been streamlined also. There is also an extension to the call-in provisions on cultural and spiritual grounds. ACT certainly opposes that. We believe that the provisions in the bill and the weight put on spiritual cultural and metaphysical issues are totally inappropriate and will be very problematic. I note there are a number of amendments in various Supplementary Order Papers that we will be discussing during the debate on this issue. We will certainly be supporting the Supplementary Order Papers that propose to drop those cultural and spiritual references which clearly are not appropriate in the context of the bill we have before us. 
ACT is supporting the legislation overall although we would like to see less prescription. We think that the regulatory regime to be put in place and the compliance costs are over the top. They could have been streamlined further and any future Government of which we are part will be looking to streamline them. We know that the New Zealand economy is based on our biological resources and that the new GM technology is critical for us and for our future. Therefore we believe that we should have a much more favourable regime than will be delivered under this bill.