Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is fair to say that an example might be if for some reason, hypothetically, an oil tanker was wrecked off the Great Barrier Reef and half a million tons of oil leached out onto the reef. That would qualify as an emergency under the legislation—that is the first issue; that is an example. You raise a question about unlicensed GMOs. As I have said—and I know we are going to come back to this later in terms of your amendments—it is only in highly prescribed circumstances that the minister can seek a licence. We will come back in a minute to have that debate but there may, for example, be examples where a GMO has been tested in another country and for various reasons it has not been tested in Australia. The emergency is appalling. It is a shocking oil leak but, for example, they have used a GMO to combat the spillage in, let us say, the United States. Sometimes governments have to act very quickly. All this legislation is about is the capacity to act very quickly to stop huge environmental damage.