Mal Washer (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just let the member for Kingsford Smith know that many states have bans on GM crops and that in the west, where we have increasing salinity and drought is a problem, there are a number of good varieties of genetically modified wheat that are drought and saline resistant that we cannot plant because of that blanket ban. I would also like to acknowledge one of the previous speakers, the member for Barker, for the work he did with me on a committee some years ago looking into these issues.

The Gene Technology Amendment Bill 2007 has been introduced to implement recommendations put forward by the statutory review of the Gene Technology Act 2000 and the Gene Technology Agreement 2001. This bill has been referred by the Senate to the Standing Committee on Community Affairs for inquiry. The committee tabled its report on 1 May, with the sole recommendation that the bill be passed without amendment. It was concluded that the bill ‘strikes an appropriate balance in managing the potential harms and benefits in developing gene technology’.

The Gene Technology Act 2000 protects the health and safety of people and the environment by identifying any risk posed by, or as a result of, gene technology and by managing those risks through the regulation of certain dealings with genetically modified organisms or GMOs. Proposed amendments to the Gene Technology Act 2000 put forward by this bill include the introduction of emergency powers, giving the minister the ability to expedite the approval of a dealing with a GMO in a defined emergency; the replacement of the two current committees, the Gene Technology Ethics Committee and the Gene Technology Community Consultative Committee, with the one new committee, the Gene Technology Ethics and Community Consultative Committee. This new committee will provide advice to the Gene Technology Regulator and the Gene Technology Ministerial Council on ethics and community consultations. Proposed amendments in this bill also include streamlining the process for the initial consideration of licences and the reduction of the regulatory burden for low-risk dealings; clarification of the circumstances under which the Gene Technology Regulator can direct a person to comply with the act; providing the regulator with the power to issue a licence to protect persons inadvertently dealing with GMOs to enable appropriate disposal of such organisms; and, implementing technical amendments proposed by the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator.

Genetically modified organisms are those which have had their genetic make-up modified, an organism being a living thing that has the ability to act or function independently. An organism’s genetic make-up, whether they are bacteria, fungi, plant, animal or human, dictates the traits of that organism—everything from the way they look to how they function. Over the millennia, farmers have understood this by breeding select plants or animals to obtain certain traits. This has also occurred in nature since the beginning of time, with those traits giving the best advantage for survival of a species being carried down from generation to generation.

Gregor Mendel’s studies involving breeding of pea plants in the mid-1800s showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, with specific traits being inherited in an independent manner. We now know that these basic units of inheritance are genes. It was not only 1953 when James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, that we could see what exactly these genes were.

In an organism each cell contains a full copy of its DNA. DNA is composed of a chain of four different chemical compounds called nucleotides, which are adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. The sequence of these four nucleotides dictates the genetic information, much like letters on a page express words. With DNA however these words are called codons and are three letters or nucleotides long. As there are four different letters or nucleotides, there are 64 different words or combinations available. When the DNA is read by the compound messenger RNA, each word or codon dictates for a particular amino acid to be produced by the cell. It is like there are many individual short stories in a long line of jumbled letters, much of which is simply nonsensical. That is why there are certain codons or words telling the reader when to start or stop reading. These readable sections or short stories of the DNA are the genes.

The amino acids being produced are the building blocks of proteins, so essentially genes dictate particular proteins to be formed. Proteins are essential for life. They are responsible for everything from the structure of an organism to how it functions—essentially, its traits. Traits that are desirable in an organism, such as drought tolerance or an immunity to a disease, can now be selected by finding the gene responsible and inserting it into the genetic material of another organism. It is essentially what has been done for thousands of years through selective breeding of plants and animals, but recombinant DNA technology is a far more precise method. This technology also enables genes to be selected from organisms and placed into other organisms that cannot normally be bred together, such as a cold-tolerant gene from a salmon being used in a strawberry plant.

The range of genetically modified organisms that can be developed from this technology is obviously extremely vast. This is why appropriate legislation is critical in protecting the health and safety of people and the environment whilst allowing Australia to gain the benefits of what this technology can offer. As mentioned earlier, the bill proposes the introduction of emergency powers giving the minister the ability to expedite the approval of dealing with a GMO in a defined emergency. This recognises that situations may arise in which approval of a dealing with a GMO may be required in a limited time. The emergency provisions also further the objective of the act to protect the health and safety of people and the environment. The provision will also improve the consistency between regulatory schemes. Other product regulators of vaccines, such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration and Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, already possess the ability to expedite approvals in an emergency.

The bill proposes conditions under which the minister is permitted to make an emergency dealing determination. Before making such a determination, the minister must: have received advice from the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, the Commonwealth Chief Veterinary Officer, the Commonwealth Chief Plant Protection Officer or a person specified in the regulations that there is an actual or imminent threat to the health and safety of people or the environment and that the dealing proposed would, or would be likely to, adequately address the threat; be satisfied there is an actual or imminent threat as just described; be satisfied that any risk posed by proposed dealings can be managed safely and have received advice from the regulator to that effect; and consult the states and territories.

The bill provides a non-exhaustive list of what might constitute an action or imminent threat including: where there is a threat of plant, animal or human disease; where there is a threat from a particular animal or plant, such as a pest or alien invasive species; or where there is a threat from an industrial spillage. For example, if there were a major oil spill and the threat of extreme environmental damage were imminent, the minister could issue an emergency dealing determination in relation to a genetically modified bacterium which breaks down oil. This process, in which micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi and plants are used to clean up environments altered by contaminants, is called bioremediation. There are a vast array of organisms which are naturally very good at this, including bacteria capable of consuming contaminants such as nuclear waste, oils, solvents, heavy metals and so on.

Current DNA technology can select some of these traits and enhance them by overexpressing the genes responsible, take them to make them more active or move them to other organisms that are tolerant of other conditions. The soil bacterium pseudomonas fluorescens is an example of a genetically modified organism that has been successfully trialled in the US for breaking down toxic polyaromatic hydrocarbons such as naphthalene and benzene. This organism was equipped with extra genes from the soil dwelling cousins and with the bioluminescence gene, lux, from marine bacteria. The lux gene causes the genetically modified organism to glow when it is in the presence of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, making it very effective in detecting these toxins.

Genes with desirable traits for bioremediation are constantly being discovered. Last August the genetic sequence for the marine bacterium alcanivorax borkumensis was reported in Nature Biotechnology. This bacterium uses oil hydrocarbons as its exclusive source of carbon and energy. Although barely detectable in an unpolluted environment it becomes the dominant microbe in oil polluted waters. Research on the genetic sequence will provide an understanding on how this micro-organism avails oil components in the ocean.

In the recent April issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology the discovery of hundreds of new species of bacteria with unusual properties was reported. These bacteria were discovered in the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. They are uniquely adapted to the pits’ oil and natural asphalt and contain three previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products. Not only can they survive in heavy oil mixtures containing many highly toxic chemicals, but they do so with no water and little or no oxygen. Obviously these traits have enormous potential in bioremediation applications. Allowing Australia to utilise these scientific advancements in a state of emergency, as outlined in this bill, could have enormous implications in helping us protect our pristine environments.

I noticed that Western Australia, along with Tasmania, did not support the recommendation that the Commonwealth and the states work together towards a national framework for co-existence for non-genetically-modified and genetically modified crops. Both these states expressed a belief that they maintain a commercial advantage by having only non-GM crops. There is much to indicate that this is a false belief.

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications issued a report last year titled GM crops: the first ten years – global socio-economic and environmental impacts. The report compared GM production systems with the most likely conventional alternative. It found:

During the last ten years, this technology has made important positive socio-economic and environmental contributions. These have arisen even though only a limited range of GM agronomic traits have so far been commercialised, in a small range of crops.

These benefits were seen in developed as well as developing countries, and in fact 53 per cent of the total $27 billion farm income benefit gained from using GM crops was for developed countries such as the US and Canada. This financial benefit has arisen from enhanced productivity and efficiency gains.

The environmental gains in using this technology have also been substantial. There has been a 15.3 per cent net reduction in the environmental impact on the cropping area devoted to GM crops since 1996. The total volume of herbicides and pesticides applied to crops has fallen by seven per cent, which means a reduction of 22.43 million tonnes. In the GM canola and maize sectors the environmental impact has also been reduced with the ability to use more environmentally benign herbicides.

There are also positive impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. There is a reduction of fuel usage from less frequent herbicide or insecticide applications and a reduction in energy use in soil cultivation. Cumulatively since 1996, the permanent carbon dioxide savings from reduced fuel consumption since the introduction of GM crops are equal to 2.05 million cars being taken off the road for one year. Farmers using herbicide tolerant crops can adapt reduced tillage or no tillage farming methods as they can effectively control competing weeds. This enhances the soil quality and reduces soil erosion. In turn, more carbon remains in the soil, leading to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The additional probable soil carbon sequestration gains in 2005 alone were equivalent to removing nearly 3.6 million cars from the roads.

What is currently being achieved with GM organisms is mind boggling, from the production of pharmaceuticals to the enhancement of food crops—not only to enhance quality, shelf-life and taste but to add to the nutritional value, such as folate in cereal crops and vaccines for diseases—the development of crops better suited to produce biofuels and the ability to grow crops in inhospitable conditions. This bill will enhance the objective of the Gene Technology Act 2000, which is to protect the health and safety of people and the environment, by allowing us to utilise this incredible technology in a time when we need it most. As I once said, why grow Third World crops in a First World country?

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