Donnelly Brian: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
Donnelly Brian: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8861] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 Obviously the commencement date is very important because it is 30 October. The significance of that is that it is the day after the moratorium expires that was put in place through the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Act 2001. It is important to realise that when the moratorium comes off we will not see this country flooded with GE crops the next day as some people would have us believe. It will simply not happen. What will happen is that people will start to prepare some applications for conditional commercial release. It will not be immediately in the food and cropping area. Tony O’Connor’s article recently stated that we are looking at several years away. In relation to rye grass it will be 5 years away. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: So why the hurry? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: That is a very good question. For a start a degree of hurry in terms of putting in place certain things is necessary because there are certain applications of this new technology that New Zealand First believes can proceed in the best interests of New Zealanders and humanity. However as I suggested in my question to the Minister in the House yesterday one of the things that has to be recognised is that there is no evidence either empirical or theoretical that demonstrates that any harm has been caused to human health from the eating of GE foods. That has to be recognised. However Dr Hutchison fails to understand that New Zealand First is talking about economic risk—an economic risk based on people’s perceptions. 
 Dr Hutchison even in his speech recognised that the majority of the public do not understand these issues. If the majority of the public do not understand these issues nevertheless it will still influence some of their consumer decisions. What we did not get as a result of the process that we went through of investigating what has taken place over the last 2 years is any evidence from the Environmental Risk Management Authority that it had in place a robust enough mechanism to be able to determine risk around the big economic picture of New Zealand and New Zealand’s exports. 
In fact that is demonstrated by two things. First Cabinet itself has asked the Environmental Risk Management Authority to do more work and for that to be reported back in over a year’s time. So the Cabinet committee is not happy with it and the Minister said she will use her call-in powers for the first application for commercial release suggesting that she does not have confidence in the mechanism that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has. Yet New Zealand is a food-exporting nation—we are absolutely dependent upon our food exports. If we are going to give the perception that we are releasing GE foods—and we do not know what impact that will have on our markets overseas because we do not have a risk-management system in place—then it would seem to us in New Zealand First particularly when in fact no applications will come in for the next couple of years that that is rather stupid and purely and simply proceeding on an ideological basis rather than a practical basis. 
So New Zealand First says: “Yes it is important this legislation is put in place by 30 October 2003.” The legislation also puts in place some other further rigid regulations. However we do not believe that this legislation should be giving possibilities of applications for commercial release of GE foods at this particular point in time. Therefore we will be amending the legislation or putting up an amendment. If that fails we will be putting up a member’s bill to ensure that we can re-impose a moratorium on certain applications—just certain ones—so that we can safeguard New Zealand’s economic future.