Parker David: General Debates 
Parker David: General Debates 
[Volume:611;Page:8350] 
DAVID PARKER (NZ Labour—Otago) 
: 
 I would like to start by coming back to the central question that was originally behind the GE corn inquiry. That was the question of whether the Government allowed and covered up the growing of the GM sweetcorn crop. It seems very strange that that particular question has been lost amongst other arguments as to whether one of thousands of documents might not have been disclosed at the time but a little bit later. That is because the underlying issue here is that there was no GM sweetcorn crop therefore there was nothing to cover up and there was no cover-up. There are not many interjections against that—there is silence. I think there is general agreement within the House that that was the principle and the underlying issue and that is where the issue ends. 
This talk of a cover-up in the middle of 2002 is really not supported by the evidence which has been traversed by the select committee in recent times. One of the most telling bits of evidence that has come out is a copy of a memo that was sent in the middle of 2001—a year before the controversy erupted in 2002—from biosecurity at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to Greenpeace. Greenpeace is not backward about coming forward when it thinks it has evidence of some sort of cover-up but that Greenpeace memo was publicly read out in the Local Government and Environment Committee and it states what actually happened. An initial test gave concern that there might be GM in the corn crop but further testing disclosed that that was not the case. The original test by Crop and Food Research was positive but it was later discounted and therefore cannot be counted as a positive test. It was invalid for at least three reasons the most of important of which was that the negative control for the test also came out positive. The calibration of the equipment being used in that sensitive test was shown to be wrong as was the test result. All subsequent test results were shown to be negative. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Nothing in it. 
DAVID PARKER 
: There was nothing in it. On that basis what are we concerned about here? We have the self-appointed “searcher for truth” as he describes himself Dr Nick Smith. Look at his history! He pulled another scam a couple of years ago over at Meridian Energy. Freeze! It’s the rug squad! He went in there as a self-appointed searcher and performed a citizen’s arrest on a rug. His allegation was that those rugs were some sort of cover-up. Rugs do cover the floor but they did not cover his allegation. That bizarre exercise ended up with him having egg on his face. That is a man with selective amnesia. Not very long ago he criticised payments the Government was making to North Korea as part of the UN-mandated campaign to try to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He forgot that those payments were authorised by his own Government when he was a Minister. 
That man has selective memory and that has brought about some strange alliances. He is in cahoots with the Greens and we should never forget that this is the issue on which the Greens have said they wish to bring the Government down. We should never forget that on the day after the election interview between John Campbell and Helen Clark on TV3 mysteriously pre-printed stickers started appearing on Labour Party paraphernalia. We should never forget that the publisher of Nicky Hager’s book was Craig Potton and that he was not only mysteriously on the list for the Greens but was out of the country on a surfing holiday during the middle of the election campaign. It is not credible to suggest that the Greens—or at least some Green members—did not know about the Hager book prior to it being published. 
Why is Nick Smith interested in this? What is he trying to deflect consideration from? It is certainly not the Budget because we have a surplus.