Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this referral and congratulate Senator Roberts on bringing it forward. It is very timely to have an investigation of this sort, for the reasons that other senators have outlined.

Before I, myself, elaborate on some of those reasons, I would like to make a couple of general comments about the need for inquiries like this. Obviously, we have in front of us a question of scientific development—of, in this case, lab-grown meat. It's something completely new, and somewhat terrifying, I think, for some, as to the possibility of risks and issues that might occur in laboratories.

I want to make the point that there must be much greater oversight of the endeavours of our scientific community, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic. This pandemic we've just experienced was the worst in 100 years. It may have been the first pandemic caused by science—caused by scientists—if it did come from a laboratory. We do not know exactly where it came from, but I think the evidence is building and growing that, more than likely, it did come from experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Certainly that seems to be the conclusion of the intelligence agencies and the department of energy in the United States, and the circumstantial evidence is quite significant.

Be that—all that evidence—as it may, I have found, in my work as a senator, trying to expose some of these issues through the Australian Senate, a complete lack of willingness to engage, from the scientific community; a complete lack of introspection about what their role may be; and, in fact, worse: an explicit, co-ordinated attempt to denigrate anyone who may suggest that somehow scientists, like the rest of us, can make mistakes or sometimes be conflicted and do the wrong thing.

That's because what is worse about the potential involvement of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that scientists in Western, free countries were definitely involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and, potentially, involved with the experimentations on coronavirus that may have, potentially, led to this tragic outbreak that has killed six million people around the world and counting. In the United States, we know that United States government funding went through to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the EcoHealth Alliance, based in New York. This stuff seemed to be illegal at the time, but Dr Anthony Fauci and the EHA seemed to find a way to get that funding through without scrutiny by their government. Here in Australia there were behaviours that perhaps weren't as consequential, but still the CSIRO were involved in training and working with Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists, including on coronaviruses. Perhaps these were not the experiments that led to this outbreak, but they definitely worked with them on coronaviruses. All of this has been exposed through the great reporting of Sharri Markson and stuff that I followed up here in the Senate.

Despite all this evidence, to this day the Australian government, the CSIRO and the department of industry are refusing to reveal of what gain-of-function research they conducted with taxpayers' money over the past 10 years. I have asked for information about that and through those questions it has been revealed that we have funded 17 gain-of-function experiments over the past decade. But, apart from some very broad generic descriptions, we have no information about what papers came from that and what the findings of that research were. They will not release any of this because of the trumped-up excuse that, somehow, releasing this information, which is taxpayer funded, would cause the safety and security of scientists to be put at risk—that they would potentially be at risk of death threats and what have you. This is ridiculous. These gain-of-function experiments may have led to the deaths of six million people around the world and yet we cannot get basic information about them through the Australian parliament, even given that they were funded by the federal government.

That isn't exactly what's in front of us, but there's a similar situation here: the scientific community seems resistant to any outside non-scientific examination of what the hell is going on in these laboratories and what the risks are to the rest of us. There were certainly risks at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which impacted on the rest of us and, because of that, we deserve to have appropriate scrutiny of what occurs in laboratories here in Australia and, indeed, around the world if we are to use the products that come out of those laboratories—if they were to be approved here.

The second general point that I'd like to make is that it's quite depressing to see the state of the once proud Australian Senate right now. There's a cabal over there on that side of the chamber that is coordinating to stop and prevent legitimate Senate inquiries from occurring—to stop the proper scrutiny of government and decision-making. Effectively, we have a Greens-Labor alliance in this chamber. They are one; they vote together almost all the time. This is a very sensible inquiry being brought forward by Senator Roberts; not everyone has to agree with the concerns he has raised, but it's clearly in the wheelhouse of what we would do in a typical Senate inquiry. I, as the chair of the committee—the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee—would be happy to conduct an inquiry into this matter. I thank Senator Roberts, who checked with me before moving this motion.

It's just very unfortunate that we have this protection racket over there on the other side, working to stop the Senate from doing its proper business. They're literally only allowing inquiries to occur into things that aren't going to cause any embarrassment. This one itself is not really into anything to do with the functioning and workings of government—only in a tangential way. As I said earlier, it's really about science and the developments here that will of course one day find their way to a regulator's desk. But there's nothing that would really necessarily embarrass the Albanese government if Senator Roberts exposed anything through it. But we still see this resistance to it and the combination here which doesn't allow legitimate inquiries. I think it's very, very sad to see the Senate reduced to being, effectively a rubber stamp for the government; it's not what we're here to do. The conduct of Labor and Greens senators in combining with the executive in this way to prevent the normal functioning and scrutiny that should occur in this chamber diminishes us all.

There is a need for this in this particular area because, just like in the example I used around coronavirus, there seems to be a level of zeal from those pushing alternative proteins—in this case lab-grown meat—that really concerns me. It's one thing to be proud and forward-thinking about innovations and excited about technological changes that can make people's lives better, but some of these scientists seem to think that the experiments that happen here or the technology that comes out of a laboratory—in this case with lab-grown meat—will somehow save the world. That's the mission some of these scientists seem to be on—somehow these alternative protein sources will stop the world from instantaneously combusting at some point in the next few decades.

My concern is that, when you have such a Messianic ideology and approach to life, you're more likely to put aside any potential risks or countervailing issues that arise in your pursuit of that Messianic goal. Because these scientists think that their work and developments are potentially the key to saving humanity, they are less likely to worry if these products cause greater disease and carcinogenic issues or spread zoonotic disease. Any issues like that that might crop up in the development of these technologies would seem small against the potential benefit of saving humanity as a whole. You see across a lot of different human endeavours and behaviours the Messianic approach loses all perspective of the fact that there are multiple factors to take into account when evaluating something as tectonically changing as growing our food in a laboratory rather than organically.

This is another justification above and beyond the fact that we should be scrutinising technological and scientific developments. In this case there should be greater scrutiny of it because of that Messianic approach I sometimes see in the scientific community.

It goes beyond just the lab grown issue. I think this inquiry is needed but not just for the lab grown meat issue. I note that the terms of reference do allow for inquiry into any other related matters. I spoke to Senator Roberts about looking at other alternative protein sources as well if we get this inquiry up. Obviously a plethora of plant based proteins have come onto the market, and there have been a lot of labelling issues around those. I know a separate inquiry with Senator McDonald did fantastic work on that when we were in government. We allowed those sorts of inquiries when we were in government. It was not an inquiry that the executive necessarily welcomed, but we allowed the Senate to do its work and look into the labelling of meat products. Senator McDonald did an excellent job on that.

There are those issues, but there are also health issues. These plant based proteins include enormous amounts of sodium. Salt is put into these products to improve their taste. That quite possibly has deleterious health impacts. I note too that, despite all the hype around plant based proteins, they haven't exactly been to the taste of consumers. The much-hyped company Beyond Meat has suffered massive reductions in the consumption of its products and has had huge losses of hundreds of millions of dollars a year—its stock is way down. Indeed, when explaining these losses the CEO of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown, commented that the plant based meat industry's biggest obstacles are taste, awareness of the health benefits and price. Apart from that, it's great. It doesn't taste very good, it's very expensive and we're not really sure about the health benefits, but, apart from that, it's fantastic. Why aren't people buying it? It's a complete mystery!

On top of that we've also seen this very strange promotion of the need to eat bugs. I don't know if people have been watching this. I thought it was a joke when it first came up.