Senator BROWN (11:14 PM) —Talking about unique fauna, at least, if an environmental impact assessment were done on the smell of the coffee and raisin toast coming into the chamber from an adjacent place, it might close down that function because of the negative impact it is having on those who are in here trying to work. But we wish them well out there.

In a serious vein, I support these amendments. I do not believe that enough work has been done on the matter. What happens if genetic modification escapes from crops into native flora? It stays there. The minister and all his advisers put together cannot get it back out. It is in the system forever. You have lost the flora, the plant life, in Australia, insofar as that genetic modification goes to work. In the case of Tasmania, a lot of the plantations of eucalypts that are currently spreading like a plague across the northern parts of the state, and now in the Huon Valley, are Eucalyptus nitans, which comes from Victoria. The genetic material from them is getting into adjacent woodlands. We do not know much about it at the moment but what we can guarantee is that it will not come back out again.

I would ask the government on a case in point about genetically modified river red gums. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating launched the genetically modified red gum proposals, the whole deal which the CSIRO has afoot. Can the government say what the impact of the genetic modification in the environment has been, who is looking at that, who is monitoring it, where it is occurring and who the Gene Technology Regulator is depending on for the feedback from that particular experiment?