Page 3227 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011

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Ayes 11		Noes 6
Mr Barr	Mr Hargreaves	Mr Coe	Mr Smyth
Dr Bourke	Ms Hunter	Mr Doszpot
Ms Bresnan	Ms Le Couteur	Mrs Dunne
Ms Burch	Ms Porter	Mr Hanson
Mr Corbell	Mr Rattenbury	Mr Seselja
Ms Gallagher

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

MR SPEAKER: The question now is that Mr Seselja’s motion, as amended, be agreed to.

MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.11): Mr Speaker, it is worth coming back to what we are talking about here. We have particularly heard a lot from the Greens comparing the actions of Greenpeace activists to Martin Luther King and to others. Let us just look at what we are talking about here. We are talking about vandalism and thuggery to stop feeding hungry people. That is what we are talking about. That is what was condoned. There was an article in the Australian and it refers to Mr Rudd. It says:

Mr Rudd, who this week visited Somalia to inspect Australian-funded famine relief efforts, said he had no reason to dispute scientific advice in favour of the use of GM foods. The Greens believe GM foods pose threats to the environment and agricultural eco-systems. Earlier this month, activists broke into a CSIRO facility in Canberra and destroyed crops of GM wheat.

Mr Rudd said any government should monitor scientific developments, but GM food had a place in dealing with global food security.

To quote Mr Rudd:

“To keep kids alive in Somalia now, the WFP—

United Nations world food program—

… needs to move packets of food supplement from the port of Mombasa into central Somalia which contains GM,” he said.

That is what we are talking about here, Mr Speaker. That is what has been condoned by the Greens, by the Speaker and today by the Labor Party. It is this destruction of scientific experiment that is designed to help feed hungry people. Some of the science that they are building on is being used right now to help feed hungry people in Somalia. So let us not try and compare the actions of Greenpeace in this case with Nelson Mandela or Dr Martin Luther King.

This was mindless thuggery against science because they do not agree with it and against a science that holds the hope of better feeding hungry people around the world. That is what this is about. Then to condone that mindless thuggery and $300,000

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