Genetically Modified Crops

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:42): Facebook is an interesting place that throws up memories, and yesterday I was delighted to see a picture from seven years ago, taken on 12 October at the front of Parliament House, when the smiling Nick Xenophon and I stood together side by side against GM crops being grown in South Australia.

At the end of last year we saw Frank Pangallo, who came in on Nick Xenophon's ticket, start to waver about SA-Best’s support for keeping South Australia GM free. So the Labor Party came up with a compromise position, which we took to the government and which the government accepted, which would allow council areas to survey the local people in their area and then put forward proposals to remain GM free to keep the marketing advantage that many areas in South Australia enjoy, including the seat of Mawson.

All that work has been done, and several councils, including all those in the electorate of Mawson, have put up submissions to remain GM free. So today I am calling on the minister for agriculture, who shares an electoral boundary with the seat of Mawson, as well as part of the District Council of Yankalilla and part of Alexandrina Council, to abide by the wishes of the people in those communities and ensure that they are granted their GM free status.

In particular, I would like to thank Jennifer Lynch, General Manager of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association, and her team who have put together a comprehensive comparison about what the industries of the McLaren Vale food, wine and tourism would look like if the GM ban were lifted in our local area.

They have put in a lot of work. They have some wonderful testimonies from people in Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Norway, Russia, the US and other parts of the world who say that McLaren Vale—which currently has 37 per cent of wineries producing organic or certified sustainable or biodynamic wines, and that is 37 per cent against the national average at 5 per cent—is an exemplar in this area.

The economic benefit to the McLaren Vale region by retaining its GM free status is about $20 million, so the argument that the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association put forward was that this is a much bigger advantage than Kangaroo Island gets for the extra money they get for their canola, which is about $60 a tonne. So that was the premise on which the government said that they would lift the ban everywhere in South Australia, except Kangaroo Island, because of the marketing advantage and the extra value that Kangaroo Island gets.

It was a very good point made alongside a host of testimonials from some of the greatest wineries in the world and from people around the world who talk about what their market experience is. They say that McLaren Vale's reputation, and the reputation of the wineries within McLaren Vale, will be tarnished by this.

I also want to thank Mayor Erin Thompson and CEO, Scott Ashby, from the City of Onkaparinga for the great work that they did on going out to their communities, as did Yankalilla mayor, Glen Rowlands and the CEO, Nigel Morris. I am also grateful for the team at Alexandrina Council who have also put up a motion to the minister for agriculture to ensure that their council areas remain GM free.

I note that if we look at Kangaroo Island, then the Fleurieu Peninsula and then up through the Adelaide Hills and into the Barossa Valley, there is a desire for those areas where we produce some of the best food and wine anywhere in the world to also remain GM free. To the minister for agriculture, we call on you to honour the requests that the people of those areas have put in. They have followed all the rules. They have gone out and listened to the people in their area and put forward a very strong and a very well-argued case.

If you look at McLaren Vale and the Fleurieu Peninsula, we have the Willunga Farmers Market every Saturday morning which is home to scores of local producers. We have people who are in the agriculture minister's own electorate like Trevor Paech of Gum Park Beef at Mount Jagged. We have Tom Bradman down at Ashbourne who has Nomad Farms chickens and does an amazing job, and then people like Ben Ryan at Deep Creek in my electorate. These people see the future as being sustainable with fewer chemicals and less GM and more value-adding in terms of the reputational advantage that we have by remaining GM free. So to the minister for agriculture, I plead with you to please honour the people of our local area.