Fitzsimons Jeanette: Third Readings 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Third Readings 
[Volume:612;Page:9131] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 This last debate on this legislation is like the final act of an inexorably unfolding Greek tragedy. The protagonists push ahead blindly on their predestined paths deaf to the cries of the chorus and to forebodings about the consequences that could follow. The audience can only watch and warn having done everything possible to wake the characters from their sleep—to jolt them into awareness of the destiny awaiting them—and to no avail. The audience is angry because it is their future their children and their economy health and environment that are being put at risk. 
As I keep saying this is the bill that makes the lifting of the moratorium operational. Without it we would not need a moratorium. There would be no release because the Government now knows that no GE organism could meet the minimum standards for release in the Act as it stands. The warnings have continued and amplified ever since the curtain went up. The evidence has accumulated that the risks are real. 
Since the royal commission ended there has been no good news for GE. The Greek chorus includes scientists who warn that the process of genetic engineering is random and uncontrolled and that the organisms that result are likely to be unstable and certainly unpredictable. We know from laboratory work that they are capable of producing new toxins and new allergens. We know from the UK’s 3-year field trials that they can have damaging effects on wildlife. We know from the few tests done on soil that the bacillus thuringiensis toxin remains in the soil for many months after plants are dead. We know that we need far more work on soil as the royal commission itself said before we will know what we are doing. We know that the glyphosphate herbicide without which herbicide-resistant crops will not grow has health risks and exposes crops to a much greater risk of fusarium mould. But this Government has not listened to independent scientists—only to those who work for industry. 
There are economists in the Greek chorus too. They are more recently arrived than the scientists but come with a warning we should heed. We have the Business and Economic Research Ltd report that states clearly that reduction in market demand for our agricultural exports because of market resistance to GE will have a much greater impact on the New Zealand economy as a whole than any productivity increase that might be postulated for GE crops. A really huge productivity increase is needed to outweigh a small reduction in market demand through consumer resistance yet we know that consumer resistance is real and that productivity gains are still hypothetical. We have the University of Otago Trust and Country Image report that warns that the prospect of genetically modified farm animals producing milk or meat for food and the feeding of such animals on genetically modified pasture plants provokes an almost universal highly negative reaction. Those were the words of the report but the Government is not listening to economists. Treasury even changed the conclusions of the Business and Economic Research Ltd and Lincoln reports to fit its story. 
Another group to emerge from the audience is the media. Over recent weeks the  
New Zealand Herald 
 the  
Dominion Post 
 and the  
Sunday Star-Times  
have editorialised that we should hold off on the release of GE. It is just too soon to be sure of its effects. The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act is supposed to be about risk management. That is a dangerous approach to take when the risks we are supposed to be managing cannot be known and are unpredictable. 
But if we are to become involved in risk management we should listen to those who specialise in it and whose money is on the line if they get it wrong. The insurance industry has popped its head up in the chorus and said that it will not insure against the risks of GE because it is not possible to do the actuarial calculations. It is up there the industry says with severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) terrorism and nuclear mishaps. The potential consequences are so large and the probability of their occurring so impossible to calculate that there is no way of setting a realistic premium. So it will not insure at all. 
Surrounding those expert voices in the chorus are the people of New Zealand. They have been telling the Government for years that they do not want GE organisms released outside a contained laboratory. That is not a public reaction like yesterday’s “flash in the pan” on the Supreme Court Bill which was whipped up by a last-minute campaign that could not even get a respectable number of signatures on a petition and which had to resort to misinformation from a radio station to make the public angry. That storm will be gone as quickly as it arose but on genetic engineering the public has been committed and vocal for years—and increasingly well-informed. 
 They were committed 4 years ago when 92000 of them signed my petition for an inquiry and a moratorium. They were still committed 3 years ago when 11000 of them made personal written submissions to the royal commission of which 92 percent opposed release outside the laboratory and which was simply ignored. They were still committed in September 2001 when some 10000 people marched in the streets of Auckland in the rain. Again in November 2002 a similar march in Auckland showed that people had not changed their minds. 
Last weekend at least 15000—some say 25000—people marched in Auckland again as well as thousands in four other cities determined that the blind and deaf players in the tragedy should hear their voices. That was possibly the largest-ever march in New Zealand’s history. I am aware of none larger even in the days of Vietnam the nuclear issue or the Springbok tour. Queen Street was full from Customs Street to Myers Park and still they came. They came with enormous creativity and hope that even at this stage the Government would listen. They came with banners with costumes with children and with animals; they came to celebrate all that they hold dear and to plead with this Government not to put it at risk. 
Maori are particularly aghast at the process of genetic engineering which is disrespectful of life of whakapapa and of the living things to which we are all related. This legislation throws Maori a crumb by legislating for what already exists. Nga Kaihautu Tikanga Taiao the advisory committee to the Environmental Risk Management Authority has no decision-making power is not appointed on the nominations of Maori and cannot even elect its own chair. At one stage the committee favoured making at least those two small changes but in the end it was not supported by Government members. 
The tragedy grinds on impervious to the growing sense of the awful destiny that could be waiting for us. There were many opportunities for the Government to listen and make changes without losing face. Amendments have been moved to extend the moratorium for 5 years to strengthen the precautionary principle in the Act to exempt food from the moratorium to continue the cautious approach to living vaccines that might live in the soil and to extend strict liability to cover cases where the law is not broken but the organism turns out to be dangerous. The Government in its arrogance has rejected them all. The only amendment of substance that the Government accepted was my proposal to require the Environmental Risk Management Authority to consider the economic costs as well as the benefits. 
It was interesting to see the Progressives breaking ranks with their Labour coalition partner in voting to extend the moratorium. It is significant that Labour cannot get the support of its coalition partner on this issue and I commend the Progressive members for taking a stand although it was most disappointing that they chose not to speak on any stage of the legislation—not even to alert us to the existence of their amendments. 
What is most interesting in voting on this legislation is the grand coalition. It should be a warning to Labour on how far it has moved that its position is now so close to that of National and ACT and so far from that of the Greens and its own coalition partner. I have news for Labour—the big objective is to get GE off the political and electoral agenda. The game is to pass all decisions to the Environmental Risk Management Authority—an unelected quasi-judicial expert committee—so that when things go wrong the Government will not be to blame. It will not succeed. Labour will be held accountable by the people for any harm that comes from the release of GE. 
In the meantime I pay tribute to all the people who have raised public awareness and done everything they can to alert the Government to the risks it is taking. I want to thank everyone who has marched made submissions visited his or her MP written letters and postcards and voted on the www.take5.net.nz website and on the numerous other petitions that are circulating. I thank Greenpeace GE-Free New Zealand the Sustainability Council Friends of the Earth Mothers Against Genetic Engineering PureFoods New Zealand Zespri ENZA Sanitarium church groups organic farmers and all those who made submissions on the legislation opposing the release of GE. We have a lot to celebrate—we have made GE a front-page issue; we have delayed release into the environment and into the New Zealand food chain to the point where much more information is available and the mood of the Environmental Risk Management Authority is more cautious. I do not believe that it will ever allow the release of canola after the overseas experience of pollen-spread. 
This legislation is not the end. There is a strong public movement that will not go away. We will oppose every release into the environment while welcoming all that biotechnology can do for us in a contained lab. We will continue to tell stories from overseas. We will continue to be a watchdog on the Environmental Risk Management Authority. We will continue to challenge the Government. We will fight in Parliament in the fields and on the streets until people stop messing with the fundamental processes of life itself.