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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4634 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This [study] shows that isolation distances will reduce hybrid numbers but not prevent hybridisation...[it] is more or less inevitable in the UK context.

While the study concentrated on non-GM canola and assessed how easily it cross-bred with near relatives in the wild, Dr Wilkinson said that the conclusions applied to any flow of genes that could be expected from the GM varieties of oilseed rape that were undergoing farm scale trials. Dr Wilkinson is not advocating an indefinite ban on GM organisms and, as a result of this research work, he has raised the possibility of making male GM plants sterile so that they do not produce pollen. But he does make the point that much more research needs to be done. Dr Wilkinson said:

One of the main reasons for doing the work is that this sort of data represents a starting point for us to do predictive modelling, to predict how particular different sorts of genes will behave across the country.

It's important to know how many hybrids to expect, to know how efficient it has to be to prevent hybrids. The key question is whether the gene that they contain is going to cause a change [to the countryside] or not.

In that context, if we want to be better safe than sorry, the research needs to be conducted with safe crops, such as the non-GM canola used in this case, to give us the vital information we need before we allow the environmental release of GM organisms of any kind.

Other UK research, under the banner of "Consequences for agriculture of the introduction of genetically modified crops", released at the same time further highlights the problems we will face in Australia if we do not change our approach. For example, scientists at the Central Science Laboratory in England found that GM oilseed rape, or canola, had cross-pollinated with non-GM oilseed rape plants more than 16 miles away.

A second study by the Scottish Crop Research Institute found that if farmers grew GM oilseed rape for one season it would take 16 years for contamination by wild GM plants produced by seed from the first planting to fall to below one per cent contamination. It is worth pointing out that even at one per cent the contamination would be sufficient not to allow farmers to sell their crops as GM-free or organic, qualities that demand less than 0.9 per cent and 0.1 per cent contamination respectively.

Given the fact that the Gene Technology Bill makes specific provision for states, for the purposes of marketing, to protect the integrity of areas of non-GM crops, the results of this research are particularly worrying and emphasise the need to guarantee against any environmental release until we know a lot more about what we are doing. According to reports in the UK Daily Telegraph of 14 October on these two trials, stringent rules for trials of genetically modified crops are now likely to be imposed there. I am interested in learning how stringent those rules will be, because it is our failure to put safety first that has led to this debate.

In the ACT, the Minister for Health has proposed a three-year moratorium on the commercial release of GM crops, echoing the New South Wales government's approach, an approach which sees the New South Wales government now considering a proposal for a 5,000-hectare trial of genetically modified canola, despite the fact that one of the

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