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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3157 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

Recommendation 5 is actually a recommendation that worries me considerably, Mr Speaker, in particular the government's response. The recommendation is:

which is the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator-

The government's response is: not agreed. The objective of the Commonwealth act, as stated in section 3, is:

to protect the health and safety of people;

to protect the environment by identifying risks posed or as a result of gene technology;

and to manage those risks through regulating certain dealings with GMOs.

I would have thought any of the risks that may come out of that would have economic and social impacts. I can't see how a health risk of any kind doesn't have an economic or a social impact. So it's illogical to say that we won't make these representations, because the act itself says that it's to protect health and safety, to protect the environment, to identify risk. All of those things, if you look at them long term, will have some impact if something goes wrong.

When we make these assessments, it would be quite easy to see that and quite easy to undertake the economic and social impact of the applications before granting the licences. Until we do that, and until we do it properly, then I think the government's words about sustainability are simply that-words. Here's the sterling example of how they could do something that would improve sustainability long term; here's an opportunity that's just dismissed because it's clearly, under the Commonwealth act, only health and safety of people. Well, that is economic and social; it is environmental; and it is important.

The question would be whether the government's response was actually sent through the Office of Sustainability-with all the work that's been done on sustainability by the government-and whether the office was actually asked to look at this response and to look at the committee's report. Perhaps the minister when he speaks to us will tell us what it is the government did in regard to assessing long-term sustainability against the GM crop issue. If we get that wrong, long-term sustainability may well be out the window in terms of the environment and in terms of the social and economic impact on people.

Mr Speaker, recommendation 6 asks the government to make representations to the council to urgently review the make-up of the Gene Technology Grains Committee. It is interesting that the Gene Technology Grains Committee is made up of representatives of the Grains Research and Development Corporation, some industry

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