Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are saying that. You are saying exactly that.

This process is significantly more efficient than the previous methods, which involved the extraction of animal insulin from cows and pigs. This process saves lives. It's appropriate that we ensure the proper regulation of scientific processes through the Therapeutic Goods Administration, just as we do with food, through Food Standards Australia New Zealand, and various organisms, through the agriculture organisations of the UN. Gene technology is a regulated process, and ensuring human safety is one reason that you have to have proper regulations in place. That's why regulations need to be revised from time to time to take into account new developments. The new regulations that Senator Rice, I'm sorry to say, is seeking to have us ignore are overseen by the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator. They are regulations which classify organisms classified by immune technologies as GMOs. They exclude the GMO organism SDN-1. That is because the regulator found that SDN-1 organisms are indistinguishable from naturally occurring genetic changes and present no higher risk.

The exclusion has been the subject of campaigns by Friends of the Earth and other groups who have a moral objection to GMOs. They have a moral objection to the use of science in this way. They claim that SDNs have not been proved to be safe and there could be unintended consequences for the food supply, animals and the environment. Well, the regulator has responded. There is no evidence that SDN-1 is harmful. I repeat: these organisms are indistinguishable from organisms that occur naturally. The food supply will not be disrupted. It will continue to be regulated by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. If this disallowance motion is passed, it will put at risk and impose quite dangerous restrictions on the ability to regulate properly. It will undermine the capacity for research and development. It will undermine the capacity for innovation, particularly in regard to medicine. SDN-1 techniques, which include the CRISPR technology, are crucial to the development of new cancer treatments and vaccines. Who do they benefit? They benefit Australians. They benefit hundreds of thousands of Australians.

There are echoes here of what we hear from some quarters about the development of nuclear technology for medical purposes. Of course, the people concerned are only too happy to enjoy the benefits of radiopharmacology when they get cancer. We have to ensure that their advice is not followed when it comes to an action such as has been proposed by Senator Rice. We need to take into account the danger to future medical innovations that the passing of this disallowance motion would create, because this attitude to GMO is formed not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of prejudice. The fundamental proposition advanced is that there is a moral objection to this science. We hear it, for instance, from the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, who say, 'GMOs of any kind and organics simply don't mix.'