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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3209 ..

Gene Technology Regulator to be challenged in a Tribunal or Court, then it would be the Tribunal members or Court judges making the decisions, taking into account the views of experts and other witnesses. Thus, having a diversity of opinion and views across the community is more important, rather than the views of those with technical expertise and interests.

It seems, however, that the ACT Assembly has chosen to follow a path where the risk is carried by the community but assessed by and large by the research community. The government has chosen to echo the New South Wales approach without any close regard to its limitations, and the opposition, it seems, has joined with the government, conceivably in the face of an industry threat to go elsewhere. The fundamental components of a truly precautionary approach have been abandoned. I do believe we could have set up a workable scheme that would have provided appropriate care and scrutiny.

This government’s GM Crop (Moratorium) Bill is a much more limited operation. It implements almost none of the more significant recommendations of the Health Committee inquiry. It simply mimics the New South Wales scheme that makes no requirement for any state level of licensing, notification or scrutiny, but simply provides for the government to declare a moratorium on the cultivation of selected GM crops. There is then an additional process that allows for the government to issue exemptions to that moratorium.

I have some amendments to the government’s legislation in order to ensure a little more transparency and balance in that process.

MRS DUNNE (8.37): Mr Speaker, this is, as Ms Tucker said, a very fraught argument. We spend a lot of time worrying about the future, and we should. But in worrying about the future, we should be also making sure that we preserve it.

There has been a lot said in this debate—and a lot has been said in debate over many years—about the pros and cons of GM food. I remember in the previous Assembly having debates that were a lot less rational than this one, where people talked about frankenfood and how this was the end of civilisation as we know it. There is a lot in the media on both sides of the argument.

I think that, as Mrs Cross said today, we must be careful that we do not stifle progress. People will actually make money out of this. Monsanto and Bayer are big companies and will make money out of this. They are the principal proponents of most of what we are likely to grow as GM crops in the next little while. Putting that aside and putting aside the commercial benefit to companies like these, we must be very careful that we don’t, to use Ms Dundas’s phrase from earlier today, throw the baby out with the bathwater. We might be concerned about Monsanto and Bayer, stop their progress and, as a result, fail to provide part of the solution to Third World hunger.

We have to be very careful that we do not let our prejudices get in the way. There is much to be said in this debate, and we need to actually dispel a few myths, like the one perpetrated by Phillip Adams in the Australian of 8 and 9 May 2004. It really does not help to have the sorts of articles that Mr Adams wrote on that occasion. “A toad in a test tube” was a rather cute cartoon that had a whole lot of boffins around the place and one of them saying, “Okay, who put the cane toad genes in with the rabbits?” There are these

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