Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to continue my remarks on a topic which I spoke about earlier in the day, which is the attack on the use of the chemical glyphosate in the farming industries of Australia. I wanted to continue my remarks on this topic because this is a very important chemical for agriculture in Australia, particularly in relation to no-till or minimum-till farming.

The use of minimum-till techniques in terms of stopping erosion, stopping water loss and maximising the nutritional retention of fertiliser in the soil is a significant environmental benefit. I think it is quite ironic that, while certain groups are trying to see a herbicide like glyphosate banned, they are, at the same time, actively working against the use of modern plant breeding techniques that would have potentially enormous benefits for both the Australian agricultural sector and the world in terms of feeding a growing population.

The case I'll bring up is the recent European Court of Justice ruling on GMO rules. What the European Court of Justice found was that organisms obtained by mutagenesis, which is a set of techniques that make it possible to alter the genome of a living species, are GMOs. Now, this is a very interesting decision and it is a completely illogical decision when based on the science. What they've had to do in order to preserve all the crops that are currently in production, including all the crops that are currently used by organic farmers, is effectively say that mutagenesis is a form of GMO. However, they're going to carve out an exemption for mutagenesis that has come from traditional plant breeding techniques, involving things like the exposing of the genome to radiation or chemicals, which are random mutations with unknown effects but which have been around for a long time. That carve out, in effect, makes absolutely no logical sense. It makes no sense based on the modern science of genetics, which understands that techniques like the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, which involves very discreet changes to the genome, are much more precise, much safer and much more understandable in their outcome on human health and safety than a random set of mutations caused by the exposure of the genome to radiation or chemicals.

So you have here the same people, the same groups, the radical green groups, trying to eliminate the use of glyphosate while, at the same time, stopping farmers from all around the world, but particularly stopping Australian farmers, from accessing the new techniques of plant breeding that would actually offer solutions both to using much, much less chemical and to dealing with changes to the climate, changes to rainfall patterns and changes to the demand for food based on a growing population. So the very same people who are trying to stop the use of a particular chemical are, at the same time, stopping the techniques that would actually mean that that chemical wasn't needed. The irony of this should be lost on no-one. We need, when making these decisions, to always look to the science of these matters. What is safe? What is effective? What is going to give Australian farmers the tools and the techniques that they need to produce the high-quality food that the world will need into future? Thank you.