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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-02-20 Daily Xml
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Genetically Modified Crops Management (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:34): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Genetically Modified Crops Management Act 2004, to repeal the Genetically Modified Crops Management Regulations (Postponement of Expiry) Act 2017 and to revoke the Genetically Modified Crops Management Regulations 2008. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:36): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I rise to introduce my private member's bill, the Genetically Modified Crops Management (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2020. As you know, SA-Best supported the disallowance motion of the Hon. Mark Parnell, moved and passed in this place last year, and will do so again. This was because we did not support the government blatantly abusing due parliamentary process. Our vote to support the disallowance motion was not based on whether we support lifting the moratorium or whether we do not support a moratorium, or whether we support GM crops or whether we do not. Our decision on the disallowance was based entirely on ensuring the due processes of parliament were maintained.

We also rejected the government's attempt to rush through a bill in the last sitting days of the 2019 parliament. GM crops are a complex and emotionally charged subject that does not benefit from undue pressure or truncated debate. The government just giving us hours to consider a GM bill was insolent to us and to farmers. SA-Best's position is very clear on genetically modified crops. We fully support the introduction of GM crops, but it needs to be a fair playing field that recognises that some may not want to be part of the GM revolution and evolution. We support farmers and their rights to choose to grow the crops of their choosing, but there needs to be flexibility, compromise and protections for GM and non-GM producers alike.

I spoke extensively on genetically modified organisms late last year, stating the very strong case that exists for them today. While there is no need for me to go over that ground again because it is on the parliamentary record, as well as on our Facebook pages, I will speak briefly about some significant developments since then because, as we know, this science has led to valuable breakthroughs in food security, treating diseases and improving the livelihoods of farmers, particularly in Third World economies.

Let's look at salmon. For more than 25 years, the American government was pressured by self-interest advocates to block the availability of a proven safe product that not only improved health but was cheap to buy and cheap to grow. Studies by the Mayo Clinic, backed by the American Heart Association, show the enormous health and nutritional benefits of consuming salmon. This resulted in it becoming such a popular food that it was in danger of being overfished.

Cue genetically engineered salmon, which take almost half the time to grow to market weight, require 25 per cent less feed and cost about 20 per cent less than conventional salmon. They are far more efficient sources of protein, needing much less feed than, say, chickens, pigs or cattle. There is no need for oceanfront pens, thereby reducing waste pollutants and virtually eliminating parasites that could spread to wild salmon.

The GM salmon are grown on land in secure facilities where production is self-contained and any waste matter is used as a fertiliser. They are infertile and there is no risk of crossbreeding with native species. So what was the hold up? Firstly, self-interest from commercial fishers in Alaska, who saw it as a threat to their livelihoods and, quixotically, opposition from the green lobby who, oddly, were myopic to the enormous positives for the environment. Imagine blocking something that is a proven lifesaver.

Since 2000, there was the misguided movement and hostility against golden rice, which is rich in beta carotene and which the body can convert to vitamin A. In Third World countries, where the staple is rice, a poor source of vitamins and minerals, this can save the lives and the sight of millions of children by increasing vitamin A. Again, with no evidence showing golden rice was harmful, countries were pressured into banning it. Precautionary approaches taken by governments and by the EU towards GMOs through regulatory agreements, like the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, have caused unnecessary delays that probably contributed to needles deaths and blindness.

In 2016, 100 Nobel laureates signed a letter urging activists like Greenpeace to stop their attacks on golden rice. People are beginning to listen and, fortunately, those bans are being lifted. Last November, Bangladesh announced it would be the first country in the world to approve it for sale and use and the Philippines have now declared it safe.

Cowpea is a cheap but important source of protein in the diet of millions of Nigerians and other West Africans, but a pest known as maruca vitrata was decimating cowpea crop yields by up to 80 per cent. After a decade of trials, Nigeria last December approved a pod borer resistant GM cowpea, which will improve lives and yields.

A research paper by Graham Brookes shows that in Colombia, since 2003, GM cotton and maize technology has helped farmers grow more food and feed using fewer resources and reducing pressure on scarce land. In reducing the cost of pest and weed control, it has resulted in an increase in income of US$301.7 million. Additional farm income growing GM crops has boosted farm household incomes, and the biotechnology has seen a sharp decline in insecticide and herbicide use and cuts in fuel use, resulting in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. I would think that my state Greens colleagues and their federal counterparts would cheer benefits like these, rather than the jeers we have been getting about GMOs, fuelled by their Greenpeace mates.

In this digital world of instant communication, on so many social media platforms, fake news and disinformation spread by bots, idiots, miscreants and malcontents can get a lot of traction, like the anti-vaxers, for instance, COVID-19 coronavirus or GMOs. A paper I read by science researcher, Cami Ryan, borrows a simple line from a Hollywood classic that aptly, if not simply, explains why the promulgation of disinformation aimed at proven technologies like genetic engineering persists in our society. I quote, 'The bad stuff is always easier to believe. You ever notice that?' So says Vivian in the 1990 romantic comedy, Pretty Woman. It is now 2020 and I can safely report to Vivian that nothing has changed in 30 years. If anything, it has got worse.

An example of that arose yesterday on the ABC's excellent Country Hour radio show hosted by Isabella Pittaway. Isabella cheekily referred to the re-run of the GM debate we are now having as being akin to groundhog day which, incidentally, takes place each year on 2 February in a place called Punxsutawney in Western Pennsylvania where a weather forecasting groundhog named Phil is pulled from his burrow to determine when spring will arrive.

After I explained our bill to Isabella, primary industries minister Tim Whetstone chimed in, spreading fake news and disinformation, with the sole intention of turning farmers against us. Yes, the very same sector that he and other Liberals cruelly shafted in energy and mining minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan's veneered revision of Labor's mining legislation, by hosing away the protections that we, and the Greens, wanted to build in for our farmers.

Minister Whetstone claimed that ours was a mirror image of his failed bill—wrong. He claimed that we were wanting to establish a GM watchdog—and just like The Advertiser's scant report, wrong again. Isabella Pittaway was right about it sounding like groundhog day because the minister, or his chief of staff, could not have read the bill before you today. So let's explore it now.

This bill lifts the moratorium on GM crops on mainland South Australia, giving farmers the choice to grow GM or non-GM canola. Importantly, our bill legislates the moratorium on GM crops on Kangaroo Island so that it cannot be changed by regulation in the underhanded way that the government recently attempted to lift the moratorium on GM crops on mainland South Australia. When the parliament legislated the moratorium on mainland South Australia, I am sure it was parliament's intent that this was in place until 2025 and that this would only be changed by legislation.

This bill ensures that if parliament wants to change the moratorium on growing genetically modified crops on Kangaroo Island, then this is only done by bringing it back before the parliament, and there is no sunset clause on this. As my SA-Best colleague the Hon. Connie Bonaros noted last year, when the government's bill was debated in this place, SA-Best is all for a fair go for everyone and laws that privilege one group whilst rendering another completely powerless is bad law. SA-Best believes that GM and non-GM crops can happily coexist with appropriate checks and protections.

To provide a more balanced approach, this bill has several safeguards built in for the protection of non-GM farmers and producers, without venturing to provide compensation schemes. It gives a farmer who has suffered loss a right to seek damages against a person with a proprietary interest in the GM plant material—that is, those who hold a patent or own the intellectual property with respect to the GM material—without the farmer having to establish negligence. This right to damages does not limit or derogate from any other civil right or remedy the person who may be entitled to damages might also have (for example, to seek damages for spray drift on their crop), but it is not intended that they be compensated twice for the same loss.

I know my good friends at the GPSA and Sam Davies, an agronomist and a former candidate of SA-Best in the seat of Narungga and whom I hold in the highest regard for his enthusiastic input on this topic, will tell me there have not been any issues of the sort in the GM states, apart from a celebrated case in Western Australia known as Baxter v Marsh, where the court found against the plaintiff for various reasons that I will not go into here.

However, there is a very recent case in the United States which highlights that there can be some associated and unintended risks when there is a GM crop alongside another non-GM primary producer. It is not so much by the contamination aspect but chemical spray drift, which can happen anywhere, I guess.

In this case, peach farmer Bill Bader successfully sued Bayer and BASF, the companies which produce GM cotton seeds resistant to a hard-to-control herbicide known as dicamba. It was alleged that thousands of his fruit trees sustained significant damage caused by dicamba drifting onto them from the nearby GM cotton fields. University field trials and farm research have shown that dicamba is prone to evaporating off fields where it is sprayed and drifting, posing a threat to adjacent crops and residential gardens.

Mr Bader was awarded $US15 million in damages and $US250 million in punitive damages. An appeal is probably in the works. Nonetheless, incidents even indirectly related to GM crops can happen and cause problems, and vice versa with non-GM growers and GM producers.

An essential adjunct to this provision is the ability for a non-GM farmer to request the relevant government authority, whether it be PIRSA or the EPA, to do a crop inspection on their property and provide a report identifying if a GMO is present in the crop at a level greater than 0.9 per cent and the likely source of the contamination in the crop. The bill adopts the national standard of 0.9 per cent that has been adopted by other states.

Farmers will not have to pay for or contract a range of private experts because PIRSA or the EPA, which already conduct all manner of inspections, can be tasked as the government agency to do these inspections and reports, on which GM and non-GM farmers will be able to reply.

Let's say Bill Bader was in South Australia and his farm sustained damage that he suspected originated from his neighbour's GM fields. He would be able to engage all the relevant government agencies to carry out tests, ascertain the type and source of the contamination, and then he could exercise his legal options. The legal rights of farmers are enshrined here. Show me a farmer who could possibly complain about that.

As I mentioned earlier, SA-Best was a victim of disinformation in yesterday's The Advertiser and through minister Whetstone's unresearched remarks. I cannot be clearer: our bill does not call for the establishment of a GM watchdog, or should I say a GM groundhog. Whether it is PIRSA or the EPA, they do not have a role of approving or vetoing the growing of GM or non-GM crops or for determining compensation.

I will acknowledge the Western Australian parliament's 'Inquiry into mechanisms for compensation for economic loss to farmers in Western Australia caused by contamination by genetically modified material', the thorough report they produced and their conclusion that existing compensation avenues were adequate for now.

A person who proposes to cultivate a genetically modified food crop will also have to give at least 60 days' notice to each owner of land adjacent to the relevant land of their intention to sow a GM crop and to harvest a GM crop. It is nothing more than a good neighbourly gesture and hardly an onerous task. It is not designed to put up obstacles. The bill also doubles the buffer zone between GM and non-GM crops from five metres to 10 metres and includes a review of the act three years after commencement and each three years thereafter—again, nothing here for anyone to die in a ditch over.

We have attempted to strike a balance, which I do hope farmers and the agri-industry will acknowledge is more flexible and less contentious. I understand there will be a government bill and other contributions from the Greens and Labor. We look forward to those, but it appears we are going to overdose on GMOs. However, I hope we can work together and accomplish the desired outcome, and that is lifting the moratorium on GMOs in South Australia, opening the door to this remarkable world of biotechnology to our primary producers, our world-leading researchers in agriculture, science and medicine. As this matter has already been widely debated in recent times in our parliament, I am proposing to put my bill to a vote as soon as 25 March. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.T. Ngo.

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