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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-11-21 Daily Xml
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GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS MANAGEMENT (RIGHT TO DAMAGES) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:00): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Genetically Modified Crops Management Act 2004. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:00): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill is part of a package of measures being introduced into the council today to deal with the question of genetically modified organisms. The bill that was introduced earlier by the Hon. Sandra Kanck seeks to extend the moratorium currently in place on the commercial growing of genetically modified crops for a further five years. I fully support the bill, and I will speak to it next year.

It is a package of measures. There are measures that we have worked on together. My bill approaches the GM situation from a different angle. The bill that I have introduced has at its heart the question of responsibility and liability in relation to genetically modified crops. If passed, this bill will come into its own if the moratorium is lifted. There is an important question that we have to ask ourselves if the moratorium is lifted: who is responsible for things that go wrong? Who is responsible for losses that might be suffered as a result of the release and subsequent escape of genetically modified organisms into the environment?

I hope that we have the wisdom here not to lift the moratorium; in fact, I hope that we have the wisdom to extend the moratorium for another five years. But there are pressures afoot, and there are many people calling for freedom of choice. They are saying that you should be free to grow these genetically modified crops, just as you should be free not to grow them if you do not want to.

The bill that I have introduced today deals with the freedom that you have not to end up with genetically modified material on your land. The bill goes on to provide that, if you do end up having your property contaminated with genetically modified material, you have the right to be compensated. So, really, it is a flip side to the freedom that the pro-GM advocates are calling for. Just as you may be free to grow it, you should also be free not to have it extend onto your land. It is not an unusual situation. We have approached a number of issues in that way.

We debate smoking a lot in this place. We talk about people having the right to choose whether or not to smoke, but we also have the right not to be subjected to passive smoking. This is an analogous situation here. If you choose not to have genetically modified crops on your land, you should have some level of security and protection, and a right to compensation if by some method those crops end up contaminating your land.

What is the likelihood of genetically modified crops leaving the place where they were planted and ending up elsewhere? You would have to say that the prospect is very likely. We all know of the type of vectors that can spread plant material. We have wind, we have water run-off, we have the action of pollinators, and we have trucks that carry grain up and down roads and criss cross our borders. And, of course, our state borders are very porous. Compare the situation when you arrive in Australia from overseas. If you go through customs and quarantine, there are thorough inspections of luggage, thorough searches for the tiniest little bug that might have found its way into the souvenirs that you bought. We do not have that at our state borders. We have a principle in our Constitution that says that trade between the states should be free. If the moratorium is lifted, not just in South Australia but also, for example, in New South Wales or Victoria, it will make it very difficult to keep this material out of our state.

The next question to consider is: what losses might people suffer—people who choose not to grow GM crops on their land but who subsequently find their land and crops contaminated with this material, which they chose not to have on their land? We have heard already about some of the premium prices that the GM-free crops can attract. I enjoyed hosting and meeting the delegation of Japanese consumer organisations who came to this parliament a little while ago. The number of people they represent goes into the millions, and they do not want to eat genetically modified crops. That says to us that there is a market and a premium that can be achieved if we resist the temptation to go down the GM path.

There is a real risk that some of these premium markets could evaporate if we embrace GM technology. We also have people who could lose as a result of having not just a GM status revoked but also if they had a higher status, such as organic status, attached to their crops. If they were no longer able to claim that their crops were organic because they had been invaded by GM crops escaping from elsewhere, then they would suffer losses and their returns would be lower. My bill says that these people are entitled to some compensation for their loss.

The next question is: who should be liable; who should be responsible if one person suffers loss because someone else's exercise of free choice resulted in the contamination of the land? The two main options would be, first, that you can make the farmer who planted the GM crops liable; or, secondly, that you make the company or owner of the patent or intellectual property in that genetic material liable. In my bill I have opted for that second option.

Rather than chase the individual farmer, the ultimate responsibility lies with those big multinational companies which sell and promote this technology. They are the ones who I say should be responsible for compensating for any losses. People might think that this is very harsh and that we should have some defences or ways of avoiding that liability, and that is a discussion I am happy to have with the Farmers Federation and others over the coming months. It may well be that we could move away from absolute strict liability, but I have not heard any arguments yet as to why that should be the case.

Liability is important because in many ways it reflects the precautionary principle, which says that if you do not know what the consequences of some action might be, then a prudent course of action might be not to do it. That is paraphrasing a principle usually described in many more words than that, but I like to summarise it like that. If you do not know the outcome, the precautionary principle suggests that you should not do it. You only need to think about these risks, and it is a reasonable position to take that if the risk is manageable and acceptable then it will be insurable. If it is not insurable, you have to ask yourself why we are allowing it to happen.

It is a very sobering thing to do to drag out your household insurance policy and find that it will not cover, for example, any losses as a result of nuclear accident. The thing that makes the nuclear industry viable is the fact that it is not required to stand behind its technology, so it can get away with making it uninsurable. If that were not the situation, we would not have a nuclear industry. So, if it is safe, it will be insurable; if it is not safe, we should not be doing it.

It is a bill of three clauses. The major clause is clause 3 which inserts a new section 27A into the Genetically Modified Crops Management Act 2004. In the new section 27A, subsection (4) states:

An action for damages under this section lies against any person who has a proprietary interest in the material.

That is further defined in the bill as being the holder of the patent or other form of registered interest or the owner of the intellectual property. So, that is the person who is responsible and they are responsible to the owners of property who have their property invaded, if you like, by this material without having introduced it or planted it themselves.

It is a very straightforward bill. I am hoping that we will not need to use it because that will mean that we have kept the moratorium going and, hopefully, we will keep it going for another five years, as the Hon. Sandra Kanck's bill proposes. Yet, if it seems that this parliament, in its wisdom, and the parliaments of Victoria and New South Wales, choose to lift the moratorium, then I think this bill is a very important fallback position so as to make sure that freedom of choice extends to farmers who do not want to be involved in the GM industry and who choose to keep their properties GM free.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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