Eckhoff Gerrard: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
Eckhoff Gerrard: New Organisms and Other Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8855] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am elated to have the opportunity to talk about this hugely important bill. There are few occasions in one’s lifetime when one can stand and talk about a new bridge to the future. If those people who invented the internal combustion engine all those years ago had had an Environmental Risk Management Authority in those days and if they had gone to it and said they had discovered an invention that would kill 20 million people during the period from then to now how many people in this Committee think that the internal combustion engine would have been introduced to this world? No one thinks that yet we know that that invention has totally taken this world of ours out of servitude. But of course there is a danger associated with it. There is a danger in getting out of bed in the morning and I know that the Greens are totally concerned about such matters. 
I say the importance of this bill is not underscored in the title. The title does not reflect anything near the significance of the bill in terms of the new bridge that we will have to the future. The Greens would like to call this something of a red flag bill which we should be running in front of. But I put it to the Committee that we are not talking about substances that will cause almost immediate death. We are not talking about a substance that will cause one in a thousand New Zealand citizens to go into anaphylactic shock. That happens today with a common substance called the peanut so why do we not ban peanuts? Why do we not have street marches and women whipping their tops off in Parliament saying that we must ban the outrageously dangerous product called peanuts? One in a thousand people go into anaphylactic shock when they ingest that product so it should be banned! Science has shown us the way forward and we have learnt to manage those things. We do not stand up and say we should ban the internal combustion engine peanuts electricity and anything else that may harm us. Instead we move on. 
I am a little concerned to see at this early stage of the debate that the rather innocuous title of the bill is inappropriate. I think the words “in New Zealand” should be added to the title because these are not new substances or organisms. As I think my colleague from United Future has pointed out these organisms exist throughout the world. The Green Party does not seem to understand that something like 200 million acres throughout the world—and that figure is increasing daily—are being planted with these new organisms yet it tells us that there is no demand for them. That is absolute bollocks. It is to the advantage of some within the political lobby groups—those who are closely aligned with Greenpeace etc.—to say that we do not want those things in our environment because if new organisms prove to be highly successful the reason for being of those groups would disappear. That is one of the great problems that the environmental lobby groups have. They do not want anything new because the new religion called environmentalism that has swept the world will be shown to be completely false when we allow our scientific community to enhance our way of living. 
I have not mentioned yet the huge benefits that new organisms will bring to the lives of those who suffer from the appalling diseases afflicting not just New Zealanders but people in the rest of the world. Why can we in New Zealand not discover new organisms and new ways of doing things that will enhance the health of not just New Zealanders but many people throughout the world whether they live in Africa Asia or elsewhere? What would it take for the Green Party to say it was wrong? What would happen if a New Zealand scientist discovered a cure for AIDS through the use of new organisms?