Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Minister, I'd ask you to reconsider your response. The question I'm asking is absolutely critical, pivotal and fundamental to this bill that we have before us today. No-one is impacted more by potential health impacts from the use of herbicides and pesticides than farmers. They're used in weed control by local governments and there are other cohorts who use them, but farmers are essentially the key people using these products. So if there's a lax system, or a suboptimal or substandard system for registering products that could potentially be dangerous to human health, then that is exactly what we're debating today. So I would ask that you reconsider and I will ask the question again. Have there been any studies done on cancer rates in farmers versus controls or in other community cohorts?