Fitzsimons Jeanette: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5343] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Minister says that this bill is to implement the  
Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification 
 which advised that we should proceed with caution. This bill does indeed carry on the Government’s intention to proceed but many of us are looking for whatever happened to “with caution”. It would have been entirely possible to proceed with all the opportunities the economic benefits the scientific knowledge and the health benefits of what we are currently doing in contained laboratories. We could have had new medical uses new diagnostic tools and new advantages to agriculture that would have sped up and assisted ordinary selective breeding without the need to release anything into the environment. That would have been proceeding with caution. 
The royal commission suggested we preserve opportunities. The Government is indeed preserving all the opportunities for genetic engineers but not the opportunities for those who wish to do other things. It is implementing the royal commission’s report very selectively and I will list six ways in which that is the case. The royal commission said very clearly that we should not use animals that are used for food as bioreactors; in other words we should not genetically engineer them to create pharmaceuticals. Yet one of the projects the Government is most strongly in support of is the cows at Ruakura which are being engineered with human genes to make medicines. The Government has shown a number of times that it thinks that biopharming using food crops and animals to make industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals is where this country should go. So that is one recommendation that has been completely rejected. 
Secondly the royal commission said that before there was any release a lot of work should be done on the risks of horizontal gene transfer which we currently understand rather poorly particularly in relation to soils. There are some research programmes; we do not know quite what they are looking at but none of them will report until long after the lifting of the moratorium when release will already be out there. It would be a pity if we were to find at that stage that horizontal gene transfer poses risks we never thought of. Thirdly the royal commission said we should ensure that coexistence can proceed between GE and non-GE crops. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry did a big report on coexistence and it delivered its findings just before Easter. Basically its recommendation is exactly what the royal commission said: that coexistence can occur provided we do not mind non-GE crops being contaminated with GE organisms. In other words we will have to accept a level of 1 percent GE contamination of GE-free and organic crops. But as time goes on that percentage will get higher and higher. It is just going to be imposed on all those who do not want GE whether or not they like it. That is not coexistence; that is contamination. 
Fourthly the royal commission said we should develop a strategy to manage resistance of insects to  
Bacillus thuringiensis 
 crops.  
Bacillus thuringiensis 
 is an important insecticide that many farmers use and that will lose its effectiveness if too many  
Bacillus thuringiensis 
 crops are grown. I was looking forward to seeing what was to be done about that. The strategy turns out to be the same as has been used for years in the United States where it has failed. It turns out that the refuges for breeding non-resistant insects make the matter worse because the resistance is actually dominant not the other way around. 
Fifthly the royal commission said we should develop a strategy for bees which of course fly 5 or 6 kilometres in some circumstances and it is very difficult to get a bee to understand that it should fly north rather than west. What is this strategy on bees after months of work on this Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry report? It is simply that beekeepers will have the responsibility of looking on the Internet to find out where the registered sites of GE crops are grown and take their hives away from them. So all the responsibility is to be put on the innocent parties who do not want GE contamination; none is to be put on the GE farmers themselves. 
Finally the royal commission said that we should do some real research on the economic impacts on New Zealand of releasing GE organisms. Treasury commissioned a report which if one reads it—rather than the purported summary by Treasury which is just spin—one finds that it establishes no business case for the release of GE organisms in New Zealand. Neither does it establish any clear economic benefit. In fact the Minister misrepresented what that report shows. It does not show that the most likely case is a small economic benefit. We can get to that point only if we adopt our own assumptions about what we think will happen which means that the markets will not react against GE food never mind that they are doing it now to everybody else as they are not going to accept our food any less because it is genetically engineered. Also there will be huge productivity gains which has not been the case with soybeans in the United States. If one takes those two implausible assumptions then one can make the numbers come out looking positive—that is the only way one can do it. 
So it is no surprise that the Minister is so embarrassed that she is not prepared to send this bill to any select committee on which there is a Green member. The committee that oversees the Environmental Risk Management Authority which does its financial reviews which oversees the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and which dealt with and passed the first amendment bill to that Act in the previous term is the Local Government and Environment Committee. But the bill is not going there. The committee that dealt with the last amendment to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act in May last year was the Finance and Expenditure Committee which had representation on it from all parties and parties tended to substitute. No the bill is going to the Education and Science Committee which is one of only two subject committees in this Parliament on which the Greens have no representative at all. So there will be nobody on the committee to challenge the Government with a science-based argument to address the real problem—the central problem of gene technology—which is that the organisms created are inherently unpredictable; that the transgene can behave unpredictably and could cause other genes to behave unpredictably. This is widely recognised by laboratory scientists as a major irritation when doing GE experiments in the laboratory but when it gets out into the environment it is a lot more than an irritation and it can be a disaster. 
I got an email just after the debate in this House in May last year on the previous bill dealing with GE. It was from a leading United States geneticist whom I have never met. I was very surprised he had even heard of me. This guy emailed that he was appalled at the lack of knowledge exhibited by the debate in this House about genetics and about genetic engineering. He sent me some material he had written which he asked me to circulate to members so they could be better informed for the next debate. I will circulate it now that there is a bill before the House that it relates to. 
This bill introduces conditional release. The Government’s explanatory note to the bill states that the purpose of conditional release is to allow out into the environment genetically engineered organisms that cannot meet the minimum standards of the Act for release. It will do that in the full knowledge that the conditions it is to impose will sometimes fail. That comes directly from the explanatory note to the bill. Let me quote what it states on page 19: “Costs could be incurred if the new organism has unforeseen impacts or impacts that cannot adequately be controlled even with the conditions imposed at the time of release. These costs may be on individuals in the form of non-GM users or across the community as a whole.” Where are the benefits that are supposed to be outweighing these costs to the community and to individuals? We are not told. However if these conditions fail and these costs occur there will be no liability because the liability provisions in the bill apply only if someone breaks the law. We are not particularly concerned about the harm that may result if people break the law. We think that probably they will generally observe it. We are concerned about the harm that will result when the law itself does not understand what the likely effects will be and therefore does not put any rules in place in terms of protection. 
The Government says in the explanatory note that liability is really no different from any other risk. Well if that is the case why is there no insurance company in the world that will insure against the risks from GE? That in itself says the situation is different. There ought to be strict liability for harm whether or not one has broken the law. It is the only thing that will make people take responsibility for their actions. This is the capture of New Zealand by a few who wish to get very rich at the expense of the many. When history shows that this has been a disaster the Government will be held responsible for what will be seen as treason and the Green Party will be there to remind them. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.