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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 3327 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

This matter has been around for some little while. I think members would recall that a former Labor member, Terry Connolly, had some interest in this subject.

Mr Moore: In 1995 he introduced it.

MR STANHOPE: In 1995, precisely. It is an issue that has at different times received differing levels of support and publicity within the community. I respect very much the intentions behind the legislation and I do respect the difficulty that legislators have in relation to an issue where successful implementation does truly depend on some national cooperation in order to achieve the desired outcome.

Of course, we cannot use the excuse of the lack of a national will and a national program to inhibit us here in the ACT in terms of those things that we believe are desirable aims. To the extent that Ms Tucker has brought this legislation forward in relation to an issue going to the health and welfare of every member of the community, in terms of their right to know whether or not they actually are being sold or fed irradiated or genetically altered food, I think the principle is quite absolute, that people most certainly have a right to know what it is that they are consuming or being asked to consume or being offered to consume. It is a fundamental right and principle.

So there is a difficulty here. There is a difficulty in acknowledging that every one of us has a right to know, through appropriate labelling, what is constituted within any substance that we as consumers ingest. But the practical difficulties of implementing, in a very small jurisdiction such as this, serious labelling obligations really are quite inhibiting. But perhaps it is not beyond our ken. Perhaps it is something that we cannot simply give up on as a result of the practical difficulties that we would face.

In terms of the meeting which the Minister will be attending in a week or so, it is relevant perhaps for the Minister to know that the Opposition in this place, the Labor Party, shares Ms Tucker's concerns about the inadequacy of current labelling. As the Minister says here - this perhaps is a point that we universally agree on within the Assembly - it is the ways and means that are actually causing the difficulties. But the Minister himself is a great exponent of actually finding ways and means through different policy issues. We note that the Minister will be raising again tomorrow issues in relation to safe injecting places. There is no more difficult issue in Australia, perhaps. It is perhaps even more difficult than labelling of genetically altered foods, Minister. Yet you are having a stab at it. That is perhaps an inappropriate allusion.

The point I make, Minister, is that, in terms of your responsibilities as the ACT's representative at the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council meeting, I would like to think that you would take to that meeting an acknowledgment that there is - to the extent that I speak for the Labor Party - a strong view that current labelling arrangements for genetically altered and irradiated foods are simply not adequate; that it is an issue that needs to be taken seriously; and that if the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council simply cannot progress the issue then they cannot complain if individual jurisdictions seek to find a way through the lack of national action in their own ways.

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