Page 3293 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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I will now go through the various speakers. Mr Gentleman started off by suggesting that I should refer to experts. I wish Mr Gentleman had bothered to listen to my speech. If he had, he would have found that I started off by referring to the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a UN set up bunch of experts. I then referred to the Lancet. In case Mr Gentleman has not heard of the Lancet, let me tell him that the Lancet is a very prestigious medical journal. It is an English journal; it has been around for a few hundred years. A whole month of that journal was based on what they called EAT-Lancet. I saw a very short part of that, but basically they said that a more plant based diet was what we needed for both human health and planetary health. They were very clear and unambiguous. Mr Gentleman, I am glad you have come back. As I was pointing out, I am referring to experts: the IPCC and the Lancet, both experts in their field.
Mr Gentleman went on to say that I was stopping people’s religious practices and saying that everyone should be 100 per cent vegan. As I said at the beginning, that is a wilful misinterpretation of my motion. I have not said that anyone has to be 100 per cent vegan. People’s religious practices are a matter for them, and I make no further comment on them.
Mr Gentleman went on to point out that we really do not do intensive animal farming, but he did not then go on to point out the corollary: that we import virtually all the animal products that we eat. The fact that in the ACT we have banned intensive animal farming is a very good thing. I am obviously in favour of it. I was one of the many Greens who moved legislation to ban cage eggs, unsuccessfully in my time. I support this, but it is not the most relevant point here, because we import the animal products.
I was quite intrigued by Mrs Jones’s speech. She does not seem to realise that there is some local vegie production. I point out to Mrs Jones that the south side markets are on every Sunday at Canberra College. I was going to say Phillip college; I am showing my age here.
Mr Rattenbury: In her electorate.
MS LE COUTEUR: In our mutual electorate. It is a great place and, by definition, all the food there is locally produced. There are a small number of animal products there—some cheese and maybe some smoked meats—but it is largely plant based and it is 100 per cent local by definition.
The thing I found most intriguing in Mrs Jones’s speech was that she said that the Greens were virtue signalling. I thought that was really great because at least it means that Mrs Jones sees plant-based food eating and vegetarianism—possibly even veganism—as a virtue. Thank you, Mrs Jones, for saying that. I am very pleased to have this ringing endorsement of my position from Mrs Jones.
Unfortunately, Ms Cody has left. Of course I was not intending to kill her with this motion. Nothing in my motion would, if passed, lead to that. My motion is talking about options; it is not talking about compulsory veganism. As I said, this is wilful misinterpretation on the part of the Labor Party.
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