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

I never thought I would rise in this place and say that I support 100 per cent the contribution of Senator Carr. I really never thought I would rise in this place and say this. I doubt I'll ever say it again, but it's good to be able to say it at least once, Senator Carr. I certainly will not cover the territory that you have covered. I probably would have said it in slightly more moderate tones, but I agree with everything that you stated. We face in this country a need to improve agricultural productivity. We're currently in the midst of drought, particularly on the east coast, though there are also some issues in Western Australia. We're seeing international competition from trading partners into what we once considered our natural markets. We're seeing productivity not increase at the pace we need it to to meet the world's demand for food and fibre. In order to achieve these things, we need a fourth agricultural revolution. We need a new green revolution—not the sort of green revolution that's indicated by the political party but a green revolution in terms of our productivity. We need to embrace techniques such as these genetic modification techniques in order to supply the world with the food and fibre it needs going forward.

I will just raise not the techniques covered by these regulations but some of the older genetic modification techniques that have been used so successfully in the cotton industry. They reduced pesticide usage in cotton crops by 90 per cent. You would think that the Greens would be jumping up and down and celebrating the reduction in the use of pesticides by 90 per cent. But, because of the ideological campaign against these techniques, against genetic modification in principle, we see them argue against it. There has been much raised of risk to the international trading environment. I will point out, in the very few seconds I have remaining, that Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States have all excluded SDN-1 from the scope of their regulation, and a number of other countries are doing the same.