The public inquiry as a contested political technology: GM crop moratorium reviews in Australia

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The public inquiry as a contested political technology: GM crop moratorium reviews in Australia a

Richard Hindmarsh & Anne Parkinson

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School of Environment, Griffith University, Nathan, Brisbane, Australia Version of record first published: 27 Jun 2012

To cite this article: Richard Hindmarsh & Anne Parkinson (2012): The public inquiry as a contested political technology: GM crop moratorium reviews in Australia, Environmental Politics, DOI:10.1080/09644016.2012.698882 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2012.698882

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Environmental Politics 2012, 1–19, iFirst

The public inquiry as a contested political technology: GM crop moratorium reviews in Australia Richard Hindmarsh* and Anne Parkinson

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School of Environment, Griffith University, Nathan, Brisbane, Australia

In 2007, the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales held reviews of their moratoriums on the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) food crops. The public inquiry form of review selected offered the best strategic pathway to amend these moratoriums to allow commercial release. As such, the reviews represented ‘political technologies’. This proposition is informed by: their formation within a policy context of pro-GM development, which saw ‘stacked’ pro-GM review panels, narrow terms of reference, and outcomes favouring a narrow coalition of agbiotechnology interests; the critical literature on public inquiries; and other evidences that suggest the underlying purpose of the public inquiries was to reach the inescapable conclusion that the moratoriums should be changed. While contributing to the literature on the public inquiry, particularly in relation to science, technology and environmental governance, these findings also invite the suggestion of new deliberative forms of the public inquiry to more adequately address legitimacy and policy effectiveness. Keywords: the public inquiry; political technology; GM crops; agbiotechnology; public participation, legitimacy, policy effectiveness

Introduction The environmental release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Australia, like many places worldwide, has found intense opposition and controversy since the early 1980s with the proposed US release of transgenic frost-resistant bacteria (e.g. Jukes 1986, Hatchwell 1989). Contested knowledges about environmental release abound within science itself and across science/non-science boundaries. These knowledges are found in scientific reviews, technology and risk assessments, economic and social analyses, media reportage, policy and non-governmental organisation (NGO) documents, and

*Corresponding author. Email: r.hindmarsh@griffith.edu.au ISSN 0964-4016 print/ISSN 1743-8934 online Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2012.698882 http://www.tandfonline.com

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public inquiries and their submissions. Such knowledge contestation reveals considerable uncertainty and disagreement about the development, environmental impacts and social usefulness of GMOs. But influencing any attainment of certainty is where different ‘epistemic cultures’ have been found to result in ‘a new strategic scope . . . for actors who have special discursive or economic power in the field of knowledge policy’ (Bo¨schen 2009, p. 517). Attempts to defuse contestation in this way, however, typically yield outcomes that lack legitimacy and policy effectiveness, which often remain contested until closure of controversy can be attained (e.g. Beder 1991). In early 2008, two controversial genetically modified (GM) knowledge policy outcomes that indicated such political contexts occurred in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW). At that time, these states, after carrying out reviews on their moratoriums on the commercial release of GM food crops as normal governmental policy obligations,1 diverged from the status-quo of all Australian canola-growing states having moratoriums of this type. Victoria let its moratorium expire and NSW modified its moratorium to allow the exemption of GM crops for commercial release (that held such approval from the federal Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR)). That these decisions were controversial was marked by a high number of submissions to the reviews (as public inquiries), the topic of inquiry itself, and strong media, commentator and public attention. Following our analysis of the reviews (hereafter, moratorium reviews), as presented below, we posit they significantly expanded the role of Australian ‘GM’ public inquiries as a policy conduit for empowering GM proponents (e.g. Hindmarsh 2008, Parkinson 2009).2 Like prior inquiries,3 it is clear they were formed within a broader policy context of pro-GM development, regulation and review (e.g. Tranter 2003, Hindmarsh 2005, 2008, Salleh 2006, Lawson and Hindmarsh 2006, Parkinson 2009, Reynolds 2009, Dibden et al. 2011).4 Such context and bias suggests these reviews as ‘political technologies’ (following Foucault 1990),5 as a form of ‘non-decision-making’, which suppresses or thwarts a latent or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the decisionmaker, and ‘consciously or unconsciously creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts’ (Bachrach and Baratz 1962, p. 949), and hence, contesting knowledge claims (also Latour 1987, Bourdieu 2004). The moratorium reviews significantly expanded the role of the GM public inquiry as a facilitative but questionable conduit for GM development. This is because they posed new heights of controversy in relation to lack of fairness, legitimacy and policy effectiveness around the public inquiry on science and technology, emphasised by such a contentious issue as the commercial release of GM food crops. They not only featured narrow terms of reference, but selected ‘pro-GM’ review panels from the non-governmental sphere in comparison to prior GM inquiries conducted in the parliamentary arena. In this context, we raise the following questions: Why were public reviews held as part of normal government practice of reviewing these moratoriums? Why and how did the outcomes unfold as they did, and what does this mean in terms of

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legitimacy, public participation and policy effectiveness?, and, Why does this form of the public inquiry suggest or invite participatory redesign according to the thrust of new modes of science, technology and environmental governance (e.g. Ba¨ckstrand et al. 2010)? In addressing these questions, we first discuss the ‘political’ nature of the public inquiry. We then provide a background of the lead-up period to the approval for commercial GM crops in Australia in 2003, and then to the Victorian and NSW moratoria reviews in mid-2007. We then deconstruct (or unpack) these reviews as multidimensional discourses of power/knowledge, involving analysis of ‘social context’ (the form of the review panels), the ‘discursive field’ (the terms of reference and the submissions), and the ‘text’ (the review reports, their announcements and outcomes) (following Fairclough 1992, see also Rogers-Hayden and Hindmarsh 2002). In concluding, we highlight issues of public exclusion from decision-making, particularly for farmers as key stakeholders in agri-food production and any adoption of GM crops. To address such issues, we advance participatory redesign of the public inquiry for better environmental governance of controversial science and technology. Overall, the paper contributes to how knowledge ‘management’ and agenda control can be socially constructed through the public inquiry, as particularly relevant to the projection of benefit claims of science and technology such as GM crops (see van Lente 2000). This highlights the role of the public inquiry as an important aspect of science, technology and environmental governance, and why it merits special attention in contexts of legitimacy, public participation and policy effectiveness. The ‘political’ nature of public inquiries Many reasons exist to hold a public inquiry (Kemp et al. 1984, Prasser 1985, Brown 2003). Public inquiries include royal commissions, task forces, committees, reviews, and working parties (Prasser 1985, also Wynne 2011). They have ‘no formal constitutional basis for their existence; rather, their appointment, terms of reference, and resources are made at the discretion of government’, and they ‘normally have no role in implementing their recommendations – that role remains with government’ (Prasser 1985, p. 1). Public inquiries are undertaken in liberal democracies as a distinctive part of the political system and policymaking process, the explicit aim being the collection of evidence generally for policy learning and to provide ‘a statutory right for citizens to be heard’ (Elliot and McGuinness 2002, p. 15). In the case of the moratorium reviews, the Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks, in announcing the reviews stated, ‘the three-person panel, to be chaired by Professor Sir Gustav Nossal, was the next step in the Government’s careful and considered approach to the use of gene technology . . . as a cautious approach towards commercialisation of GM canola’.6 In turn, the NSW government stated it was, ‘keen to canvas all the possible options and stakeholder opinions before making a decision on the future of GM crops’

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(New South Wales, Department of Primary Industries 2007). These statements while elaborating little on the intent of Victoria and NSW to hold the reviews, align to normative intentions of public inclusivessness and several reasons to hold public inquiries. A primary reason is to resolve a highly contentious issue that has attracted significant distrust in government. An associated one is to help government manage complex technological systems (Elliot and McGuinness 2002, also Ashforth 1990). These two reasons are particularly applicable with respect to controversial science and technology (S&T) areas, such as new genetics, nuclear and renewable energy, or electromagnetic fields. To resolve a highly contentious issue, as Prasser (1985, p. 3) outlined, invariably ‘a group of outsiders in the form of an inquiry is needed to absolve the innocent and judge the guilty’; where the notion is that inquiries are ‘independent and fair’. Another reason to hold an inquiry can be to depoliticise the issue under question (Brown 2003), and remove government from possible blame about the outcome/s. This, in turn, can aim to invite perceptions of governmental neutrality, in turn, legitimacy, and the regaining of public trust. Similarly, Habermas (1977, cited in Brown 2003, p. 108) advanced that public inquiries can be held to investigate problems threatening the state with a legitimation deficit, with the aim to re-establish and justify state authority. However, critical appraisal of public inquiries has also highlighted questions of legitimacy and policy effectiveness regarding knowledge claims, public engagement and outcomes. In this regard, science and technology inquiries have featured well (e.g. Baker 1988, O’Riordan 1988, Mercer 2002, Ankeny and Dodds 2008, Hindmarsh 2010, Wynne 2011). Marking a lack of policy effectiveness is the often significant divergence between a review’s findings and the views of many or a majority of its submissions, resulting in broad non-acceptance of the findings (Besley 2010). Such outcomes often reflect the more manipulative intent of non-decision-making, when public inquiries can be held to appease the discontent of public interest groups with potentially sufficient power to destabilise industrial development programmes supported by the state; and/or to maximise gains for favoured key interests (Ashforth 1990). Following this line of argument, Burton and Carlen (1979, p. 8) suggested that inquiries may also represent ‘a system of intellectual collusion . . . to replenish official arguments with both established and novel modes of knowing and forms of reasoning’. This outcome reflects what Rogers-Hayden and Hindmarsh (2002) found with regard to the outcomes of New Zealand’s 2000– 2001 Royal Commission on Genetic Modification; also what Hindmarsh and Hulsman (2004) found with the report of the Australian government’s inquiry into genetically modified organisms (1990–1992). Concerning the latter, for example, while public interest submissions (47% of the 167 submissions) advocated inclusive public participation at all stages of GMO policy and research and development assessment, the inquiry only recommended public comment on proposed GM releases if considered ‘desirable’ by the regulatory

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authority, and that only the responsible minister have discretional power to order public hearings (Hindmarsh 2008, pp. 191–192). Background to the GM moratorium reviews During 2000–2002, global issues around GM ‘contamination’ became pivotal in crystallising concerns about the risks of commercial GM crops, particularly from farmer, consumer and environmentalist standpoints. Priming these concerns was the US ‘StarLink’ corn contamination incident of October 2000. Traces of StarLink, an Aventis GM corn, had appeared in taco shells throughout the United States, even though unapproved for human consumption. Later, in a 2003 settlement, StarLink Logistics and Advanta USA agreed to pay US$110 million plus interest to farmers whose crops were tainted with StarLink corn, or who had suffered from a drop in corn prices due to the resistance of consumers and retail outlets to StarLink corn (Uchtmann 2002, Arasu 2003). Closer to home, in 2000, continuing regulatory breaches of GM canola field trials saw the state of Tasmania introduce a three-year moratorium on GM food crops to protect the marketability of its produce (Tasmania 2001, p. 5). Under its Plant Quarantine Act, guidelines sought to minimise proliferation of GM crops undergoing field trials through potential cross-pollination with wild relatives. Journalist Geoffrey Lean of the UK Independent wrote: ‘[This] will blow a hole in the pro-GM policy of the Australian government which has been perhaps the US administration’s closest ally in pushing the technology’ (Lean 2000). In addition, a number of local councils throughout Australia declared their jurisdictions as GM-free zones, as also occurred in neighbouring New Zealand (Rogers-Hayden and Hindmarsh 2002). The activist Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF) also emerged to foster increased farmer awareness and action about GM issues, which were seen as interrelated economically, socially and environmentally, and to canvass for more effective and broader regulation. In following these developments, and informed by notions of technology risk and trust (e.g. Beck 1992), Parkinson interviewed 54 NSW canola farmers in mid-2002 about GM canola cropping (Parkinson 2009, also, Parkinson and Hindmarsh 2003). Parkinson found the farmers held three primary and interrelated concerns of livelihood, environment and technological dependency. First, maintaining markets for non-GM products, as export markets might reject GM (contaminated) produce. Second, that the GM herbicidetolerance trait might also outcross and contaminate weeds, making weeds more difficult to control and thereby stimulate increased herbicide application (which would also contradict the promise of GM crops to reduce herbicide usage). Third, that increasing corporate ownership of agricultural technology would reduce farmers’ autonomy to choose cropping pathways. The marketability argument was supported by commodity dealers including the Australian Wheat Board, which, in 2003, had found a third of its customers held zero tolerance for GM grain (Hemphill 2003). On the

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environmental and consumer front, Greenpeace Australia, the Australian Genethics Network, Friends of the Earth, the Australian Consumers Association, the Biological Farmers of Australia, and the Tasmanian and NSW Greens pressured for ‘responsible regulation’ of GMOs. In response to such arguments and pressures, and in anticipating that the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) would soon approve commercial cultivation of GM canola, Western Australia, NSW, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia placed moratoriums on the commercial release of GM food crops on grounds of marketability. Economic grounds were the only ones that states could opt out of releasing GMOs according to the mirror federal and state legislation of the Gene Technology Act 2000 (Tranter 2003, Dibden et al. 2011). In addition, Victoria placed a one-year moratorium specifically on GM canola (extended in 2004), and Tasmania extended its existing moratorium to June 2008. These policy turns climaxed during the public comment period of the OGTR’s risk assessment of the proposed commercial release of Bayer CropScience’s herbicide-resistant canola. The 256 written submissions, 531 campaign letters and five petitions (OGTR 2003, p. 150) far exceeded public comment on previous proposals to release GMOs, even though the submission process represented a weak form of public participation with little decisional influence (e.g. Tranter 2003, p. 255). On 25 July 2003, the OGTR approved Bayer CropScience’s GM canola for commercial release. Notably, in announcing the approval the Regulator, ‘encourage[d] farmers and the public to become fully informed about all aspects of GM crops’ (OGTR 2003). This comment seemed to imply that ‘farmers and the community [were] uninformed about crucial aspects of biotechnology’ (Schibeci et al. 2006, p. 437); that they had a cognitive deficit for legitimate knowledge or meaningful policy input even though farmers, for example, were the main risk bearers and users in any adoption of GM crops. But there was also the suggestion that such comment – from an appointed regulator widely seen in environmental circles as strongly pro-biotechnology7 – aimed to delegitimise dissenting farmer (and other public) knowledges and views. It was notable the month after the OGTR’s approval that Biotechnology Australia (2003) – the federal agency with prime responsibility for the development of gene technology – released the findings of an Australia-wide survey of 500 farmers’ attitudes to GM crops, which found 49% of farmers opposed GM crops. Nevertheless, three months later, on 2 October 2003, the OGTR also issued in-principle approval for Monsanto’s application for commercial cultivation of its GM canola. In response, a Network of Concerned Farmers (2003b) press release titled: ‘Why trust the regulatory process?’ called for a review of the Gene Technology Act 2000 and of the role of the OGTR on grounds of neglect in evaluation. The NCF argued a strong bias in favour of GM crops had led to the Regulator ignoring its legislated responsibilities to protect the environment (NCF 2003a, also Tranter 2003, Lawson and Hindmarsh 2006). Following many earlier regulatory breaches involving ‘gene escapes’ from Australian trial sites, this claim seemed validated only a month later when flowering canola

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plants again escaped from a (Bayer CropScience) trial plot into a neighbouring field (Hindmarsh 2008, pp. 256–257). Conversely, for those favouring GM development, the state moratoria presented a significant barrier. Pro-GM interests soon mobilised and began to intensively campaign to collapse the moratoria, despite issues that kept surfacing, which questioned the operation of the OGTR and any collapse of the moratoria. For example, in 2004, it became public knowledge . . . that the Australian Government was not attending to a report by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which pointed to some 150 aspects of uncertainty surrounding GM crop development, three-quarters of them not regularly looked at by the OGTR. (Salleh 2006, pp. 404–405)

Other expert appraisals followed. For example, in 2005, Kiyork’s (2005, p. 152) summation of the Gene Technology Act 2000, and approval of Monsanto Australia’s Roundup Ready canola, found ‘limited scope for public participation and lack of emphasis on the precautionary principle also demonstrate[d] the inability of the scheme to adequately meet its objective of protecting the environment against the risks associated with biotechnology’. Soon thereafter, Lawson and Hindmarsh (2006, pp. 42–44) analysed the Regulator’s risk assessment of, and license granted to, the GM canola application of Bayer CropScience (2002). These authors’ found an absence of quantitative data about the GMOs (and GM products) for which the license was sought; a failure to identify, acknowledge or address inherent value judgements in the assessment of risks; a failure to assess long-term or intergenerational assessment of potential impacts, particularly the degree of environmental risks; the non-disclosure of data and information from earlier trials of (Aventis CropScience) GM canola; and acceptance of supporting data (some unpublished) from the applicant (Bayer CropScience). Such questionable assessment suggested the need for stronger public participation, as well as expert pluralism (for example, the inclusion of ecologists) to ensure more responsibility in the decision-making of the OGTR on environmental release. Also questioning the capacity of the OGTR to assess risk was Ariel Salleh – Associate Professor of Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney, who served on the inaugural ethics committee of the OGTR in 2001–2004. Salleh (2006, p. 400) reflected: as the Gene Technology Act 2000 stands, bureaucratic compartmentalism, an outmoded model of genomics, a naı¨ ve concept of ‘value free’ risk assessment, result in intricate methodological dilemmas being treated reductively, and thus inaccurately, as routine aspects of scientific management. In each case, the intent is technocratic control, but the unintended effect is a kind of ‘organized irresponsibility’.

Organised irresponsibility seemed pronounced with the OGTR ethics committee invited to address the interplay of values and risks of GMOs,

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but procedurally isolated from decisional influence for environmental release. Decisional influence was only held by the technical committee dominated by laboratory-based bioscientists, a long tradition in Australia’s GMO regulation (Hindmarsh 2008). In addition, both the ethics and community committees were disallowed by the OGTR from inviting public participation in their deliberations on the risks of releasing GMOs (Salleh 2006). Despite the critical appraisals, the manoeuvres of the pro-GM coalition strengthened as the moratoriums continued. An influential narrative was that commercial GM canola growing would allow farmers to compete on world markets (Foster and French 2007, O’Neill 2007). Coalescing around this narrative of ‘potentially missing out’ was a discourse coalition that fostered a burgeoning portfolio of positive GM reports and studies.8 This promotion, which targeted government, heralded a concerted effort by bioscience and industry to challenge the moratoria. It climaxed prior to the Victorian and NSW reviews of their moratoriums, which began in May and July 2007 respectively (with both moratoriums due to expire in February and March 2008, respectively). The moratorium review panels and processes The Victorian inquiry stated that: ‘The Panel came to the task with an open mind’.9 Likewise the NSW inquiry cast its exercise as ‘independent’. Such messages project images of neutrality, fairness and inclusion (Prasser 1985). It then seemed contradictory that only limited profiles of the panel members were placed on the reviews’ respective websites inviting submissions. Both websites omitted that four of the six reviewers from both state reviews had biological science and agricultural research or farming backgrounds supportive of GM.10 Furthermore, that two of the key reviewers were directly associated with new genetics research, with one of the latter and two other reviewers associated (in holding important positions) with organisations undertaking GM research. Also unmentioned was that the chair of the Victorian review panel had long promoted transgenic crops in a book series (Nossal 1984, Nossal and Coppel 1989, 2002). In addition, some reviewers had overlapping organisational membership.11 For both reviews, the terms of reference reflected the narrow regulatory arrangement established by the Gene Technology Act 2000, which had informed the implementation of the moratoria in the first place. To reiterate, this specified marketability (or economic) grounds as the only grounds allowed for states and territories to opt-out of field trialling or growing GM food crops if they so chose (Tranter 2003, Reynolds 2009, Dibden et al. 2011). The arrangement, which disregarded environmental risk grounds, was devised by federal and state bureaucrats from departments supporting GM development who had formulated the Act (Hindmarsh 2008, pp. 225–226).

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Accordingly, the Victorian review focused on assessing ‘economic impacts’ while NSW focused on ‘marketing, trade and investment’ issues, with regard to the consideration of extending or lifting the GM moratoriums. Human health and safety issues and environmental impacts, were excluded, as being beyond the scope of mirror state gene technology legislation. This posed a dilemma for concerned farmers and other stakeholders raising interrelated social, economic and environmental concerns. The narrowness and non-representation of what farmers considered as everyday practical realities, as well as other shortcomings presented by the review processes, prompted the following criticism from Greenpeace Australia anti-GM campaigner Jeremy Tager (2007, p. 1): Once again, the public is presented with a sham process. Rather than being provided with a proper, public, accountable and transparent Parliamentary Inquiry, we are faced with review panels that are unrepresentative, biased, subject to direct political pressure and with procedures that are neither adequate nor appropriate. Comment periods are too short. Lack of full community consultation is inexcusable. Time frames for reports are too short to allow the kind of inquiry that needs to be done. There is no representative of NGOs, organic growers, concerned marketers etc. The process is not accountable. The extent of consultation, the manner in which testimony is heard, issues investigated, conclusions [are] reached is not public.

Nevertheless, the NSW review received 1365 submissions and the Victorian review 1178. Excluding pro-forma ones of anti-GM campaigns, the NSW review received some 200 submissions and the Victorian review 248, which represented far more than the submissions received for each prior GM public inquiry. The submissions Submissions in favour of lifting the moratoriums came from agbiotechnology development interests (government, corporate and research and development organisations) with support from major farmer organisations, the National Farmers Federation (NFF), the NSW Farmers Association (NSWFA), and the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF). Supportive of extending the moratoriums were submissions from organic and biological farmer organisations as well as the Network of Concerned Farmers; the food retail industry; environment and consumer groups; and some 20 individual farmers from each state (DPI NSW 2007, DPI Victoria 2007). Some of the latter – also members of the NFF, NSWFA and VFF – stated their farming organisations did not represent the views of members accurately about GMOs. Studies (e.g. Halpin and Martin 1999) and media reports had also found deep divisions in the ranks of these farmer organisations (e.g. Brennan 2003), particularly over the lifting of the GM moratoria in NSW and Victoria (Leung and Guerrera 2007, Perriam 2007, Chandler 2008). Such diverse views within the farming sector questioned the justification of both reviews’ recommendations to amend or lift the moratoria, particularly in relation to ‘strong industry support’ for an industry managed segregation plan

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to address contamination issues (DPI NSW 2007, DPI Victoria 2007). Challenging that view had been those of individual farmers and other farmer organisations (e.g. the NCF and organic and biological farmer associations), which consistently raised issues that questioned co-existence with regard to contamination affecting market access and price premiums for non-GM canola, and liability for contamination of non-GM produce. Nevertheless, the reviews adopted the view that segregation was manageable, and that liability concerns could be effectively managed under redress to common law, as an earlier review of the Gene Technology Act 2000 had recommended. The outcomes On 27 November 2007, Victoria and NSW announced simultaneously their intentions to alter the status of their moratoriums. Victoria announced its moratorium would expire in February 2008, after which all federally-approved GM food crops could be commercially released unless an order banning their cultivation was made under the Control of Genetically Modified Crops Act 2004 (Vic) (Dawson 2008). Ten days later, the NSW government amended its Gene Technology (GM Crop Moratorium) Act 2003,12 which was extended until July 2011 (and later until 2021). The GM canola specific moratorium orders were amended by a blanket moratorium on all GM food crops (see Agrifood Awareness Australia n.d.), with powers of exemption.13 The power to exempt any GM food crop (holding OGTR approval) began with a new NSW Expert Committee (comprised of representatives of the food plant industries), provided advice on: whether an industry is prepared and capable of segregating GM and non-GM food crops . . . [where] the Minister will have the power to refuse approval to cultivate a specific crop if an industry fails to meet the criteria imposed by the expert committee.14

Soon after these amendments, the NSW Expert Committee assessed a longstanding 2007 application for commercial release of GM canola. On 14 March 2008, approval was granted (DPI NSW 2008). This development suggested alignment to the announcement of the NSW government about the modification of its moratorium: ‘NSW farmers will be given the choice to grow the type of canola crop they want, putting them on a level playing field with overseas farmers for the first time’. In turn, this reflected the drive for international competitiveness, a key ongoing tenet of Australian agricultural policy, and, again, the ‘fear of missing out’ narrative (see Dibden et al. 2011, pp. 111/117). Such framing of ‘future benefits’ for GM technology development also preceded the Australian House of Representatives 1999 Inquiry into Primary Producer Access to Gene Technology.15 Announcing this inquiry, committee chairperson Victorian Liberal MP Fran Bailey (1999) stated: ‘Gene Technology will be the next great worldwide revolution after the industrial and the information technology revolution . . . We cannot afford to be left behind in this debate.’

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Providing further insights of how the reviews suggested political technologies were revealing features of Victoria’s review report, the announcement of the expiry of its moratorium, and the reaction to that. Victoria’s report and announcement

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A key problematic with regard to fairness of representation concerning Victoria’s terms of reference was presented by an ambiguity in the inquiry report. The terms of reference referred to economic grounds only. But the inquiry report drew substantively on the report of its consultant ACIL Tasman, which at one point stated: A continuation of the moratorium would also deny Victorian farmers the potential use of a range of next generation GM canola traits such as environmental stress tolerance, improved oil qualities and high value new industrial and human health traits. (ACIL Tasman 2007, p. vii)

Explicit interrelationships between economic, social and environmental aspects of GM crops were thus projected, in contradiction to the terms of reference. Conversely, interrelationships of contamination and farmers’ livelihoods raised in the submissions that tended to confront the desired stand-alone economic argument were downplayed. Also undoubtedly vexing for concerned farmers and other interests were a number of questionable statements – with regard to legitimacy and effective policymaking – made in Victoria’s announcement to end its moratorium, which featured Premier John Brumby and review panel chair Gustav Nossal. Brumby made the argument that when the moratoriums were put in place: a range of farmer groups had mixed views about the use of GM canola, and what the Review Panel has found . . . is that there are now huge supporters of GM canola . . . the Victorian Farmers’ Federation, the Australian Grains Council, the Australian Diary Industry Council, the Australian Oilseeds Federation, ABB Grain, the Australian Food and Grocery Council, the Birchip Cropping Group, Crop Life Australia and Graincorp. (Premier of Victoria 2007, p. 2)

Following on, Nossal stated: ‘The industry, four years ago, was very doubtful about these technologies, now, with a couple of notable exceptions, 90 per cent of the industry is for the lifting of the moratorium, and for giving farmers the choice’ (Premier of Victoria 2007, p. 3). Yet, most industry players mentioned represented the agribusiness lobby canvassing the end of the moratoriums, with Crop Life Australia – the peak body of corporate developers – a leading one. As for the claim of 90% of the industry in favour, this figure was not cited in the Victorian review panel report (DPI Victoria 2007). Another misrepresentation was in regard to the cited support of the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC). This was because the day before the review announcements, Goodman Fielder, Australia’s largest food company and a key member of the

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AFGC, and 250 other food companies ‘call[ed] on the governments to extend their bans on GE food crops’ (see Food Processing 2007). Turning to ‘independent’ representation of inquiry, Nossal also sought to justify the selection of the reviewers to make credible judgements:

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I said [to former premier Steve Bracks] you will know that I’m a strong believer in genetic science and that, as a general point, I’m for GM science. That’s not to say that I’m necessarily for, before I go in and look at the evidence, not continuing the moratorium – they’re two very different things. (Premier of Victoria 2007, p. 9)

Amongst many criticisms of such claimed independence, the view of Victorian Labor MP Tammy Lobato – a backbencher in Brumby’s government, who represented the large rural district of Gembrook – was notable. Lobato questioned the independence of Nossal, ‘branding as ‘‘seriously compromised’’ his government-appointed panel’, as journalist David Rood (2007, p. 5) of The Age further reported: ‘In 2002, Gus Nossal saw the issue of adoption of GM as merely a public relations battle that had to be won. His stance was so entrenched that (multi-national company) Monsanto used his statements in their own marketing,’ she said. In an ABC radio interview last year, Sir Gus said the ban on GM crops was ‘crass populism’ and bad policy and politics.

The Victorian Local Government Association was also unconvinced (ABC News 2007), as was the Australian Grain Harvesters Association, which ‘expressed dismay that the moratorium had been lifted without granting its members legal protection from court action over contamination’ (Truman 2007). Also notable was that in the month the Victorian moratorium expired, a Rural Press Marketing Survey found that 54% of Victoria’s grain growers did not support Victoria lifting its moratorium (Thompson 2008). Conclusions From this excursion into the politics of the reviews of the GM moratoriums in Victoria and New South Wales, our conclusion is that the reviews constitute the most recent key policy ‘event’ in Australian GM regulation aiming to facilitate agbiotechnology development.16 In this case, to introduce GM food crops into Australia on a commercial basis for widespread adoption. In these discursive policy turns, the concerns and dissent of farmers (as well as consumers, key food companies and retailers, environmentalists, and concerned scientists) were largely confined or ignored as key stakeholders in any adoption of new agrigenetics technologies. Consequently, biocommercialisation was introduced and made easier in the biopolitical struggle over the intense social, economic and environmental contestation of the perceived risks, costs and benefits of GM crops. Clearly, the moratorium reviews represented a key conduit to further entrench large agbiotechnology and pro-GM farming interests. Alternatively, to disempower dissenting views with potential to destabilise bioindustrial

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development programmes supported by the state and bioindustry. The selection of review panel members and their terms of references signalled this, as did the review announcements and reports which replenished official arguments about the promise of GM and potential investment. Concomitantly, the ACIL Tasman consultancy report for Victoria’s review revealed an important ambiguity in relation to the terms of reference as solely economic. It did this by referring to interrelated health, environmental and economic aspects, clearly believing they were relevant, seemingly inseparable, which farmers (and other contesting interests) had consistently argued in vain. What the moratorium review findings then point to is that both reviews and current regulation were proactively ‘shaped by the political context in which a particular investment proposal is conceived and born’ (Kemp et al. 1984, p. 478), through the use of the public inquiry, which indicated its application as a political technology. Overall, the reviews appeared as a largely remedial process to re-establish and extend legitimation of dominant (corporate and state) institutions and their investment (following Ashforth 1990, Gephart 1992, p. 131). Applying this form of non-decision-making as a strategy of power, contesting interpretations, claims, rationalities or logics, particularly those of public interests and farmers, were undermined or suppressed. As Bachrach and Baratz (1970, p. 17) argue, those exercising such non-decisionmaking become ‘placed in a preferred position to defend and promote their vested interests and, more often than not, are the ‘‘status quo defenders’’ of a minority or elite group within the population in question’. As Besley (2010) pointed out, such decision-making defines or highlights policy ineffectiveness. The indication then is that the underlying purpose of the reviews was to reach the inescapable conclusion that the moratoriums should be modified or expired. A framing of ‘independent’ scientific, environmental and farming expert authority, as well as economic authority (that is, of ACIL Tasman in the case of Victoria), was essential to the making of such a conclusion for closure (although unsuccessful) of the socially and environmentally risky controversy surrounding the commercial release of GM food crops.17 The selection of the public inquiry mode of review thus presented the most strategically legitimate pathway to alter the status of these moratoriums to allow commercial release of GM food crops. Arguably, if the review had been conducted internally by government, such alteration would likely have attracted far more public attention and dissent. What thus appeared most hidden to the public eye in these reviews was lack of ‘procedural fairness guaranteeing both private rights and (various) public interests’, a criterion that Kemp et al. (1984, p. 480) posited is essential to the legitimacy of the political, as well as to the legal and administrative models of the public inquiry. In turn, such findings reflect key criticisms of public inquiry process (Elliott and McGuiness 2002, p. 16). First, the reviews were not impartial. Second, the process was not thorough as the terms of reference were ambiguous or contradictory, in not allowing for interrelated economic, health, and/or environmental issues to be raised through submissions although hired

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inquiry consultants were apparently able to through endorsement of the report by the inquiry. Third, the underlying purpose was clearly not to remedy the concerns of all parties but more so limited interests in favour of ending the moratoriums, that is, a coalition of gene technology development interests. Such findings do not inspire confidence in the Victorian and NSW GM moratorium reviews as legitimate procedures and practices of fair and trustworthy governments or governance. Instead, in contested knowledge contexts of legitimacy, arguably in reflecting a ‘crisis of legitimation’, and of environmental and agri-food sustainability, the review procedures and practices invite further critical reflection and investigation as to the validity of their recommendations. In addition, with regard to engaging citizens and diverse stakeholders in processes that reflect sufficient inclusion to satisfy the intent of the public inquiry to provide ‘a statutory right for citizens to be heard’ in contexts of policy learning (Elliot and McGuinness 2002, p. 15). But perhaps such inclusion can only be satisfied through new forms of public engagement that redesign these ‘passive’, limited or technocratic examples or forms of the traditional public inquiry? Limitations include inquiry terms of reference decided upon by elites in non-transparent and narrow representative procedures of formulation; the selection of reviewers which exclude citizen representatives and include obviously biased ones; and where the major form of public participation is submissions placed in a ‘black box’ for consideration or that invite their strategic selection for decisional influence. With the stakes high for society in choosing the best pathways for sustainability transitions and food security, the biased manner in which the Victorian and NSW GM crop moratoriums were lifted and modified, respectively, to allow commercial release of GM food crops, highlights the need to pay close attention to the public inquiry as an important policy tool. In the form of the GM moratorium reviews held by Victoria and NSW – which appears to typify the thrust of many other public inquiry constructs as political technologies in the context of non-decision-making – the place of the traditional public inquiry in transitional times of governance (e.g. Jasanoff 2004), or in realising the participatory claim of the public inquiry, is thus highly questionable. Arguably, a new deliberative public inquiry approach (e.g. Horlick-Jones et al. 2006, Rogers-Hayden and Pigeon 2007, Ankeny and Dodds 2008, Hindmarsh 2010), along the lines of new participatory modes of science, technology and environmental governance (Ba¨ckstrand et al. 2010), is a more promising option for such highly contested knowledge controversies in terms of ensuring adequate legitimacy, public participation, and policy effectiveness. Notes 1.

For Victoria, see: http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/science-and-research/bio technology/genetically-modified-crops/moratorium/review [Accessed 3 December 2011]. For NSW, see: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/field/field-crops/ oilseeds/canola/gm [Accessed 3 December 2011].

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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For example, see the reports of the 1992 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Technology Inquiry into Genetically Modified Organisms; and the 1999 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Regional Services Inquiry into Primary Producer Access to Gene Technology. See also the government senators’ dissenting report issued in response to the 2000 Senate Inquiry into the Gene Technology Bill 2000. The one exception was a Senate Inquiry (Senate Committee 2000) into the Gene Technology Bill 2000. The inquiry report made a point of stating that government needed to ‘listen to the community, to explain developments in the rapidly evolving gene technology area and to have regard to community concerns in this area’. For the wider international context, see, e.g. Gottweis (1998), Rogers-Hayden and Hindmarsh (2002), Andre´e (2002, 2011), Krimsky (2005), and Walters (2011). Political technologies can include discourses, techniques, devices, interventions, apparatuses, procedures and strategies deployed to secure favourable outcomes for those who construct and use them. News Archive: Aus – Victoria announces review of GM canola moratorium. Available from: http://www.afaa.com.au/news/n_news-2025.asp [Accessed 26 December 2011]. For example, Bob Phelps of the Australian Genethics Network, cited in Hindmarsh and Hulsman (2004, p. 61). Examples include Focus, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering’s (ATSE) magazine, which ran a special GM issue in 2006; the CSIRO, which ran a special pro-GM feature in ECOS magazine in 2007 (O’Neill, 2007); and the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology with two pro-GM journal editions in 2007. See: http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/DPI/nrenfa.nsf/LinkView/5477226A88881F86CA 2572E300074EEF89E6C67B468BD2A7CA256FB70001BAB8#comp [Accessed 20 April 2010]. One reviewer was vice president and member of the pro-GM Victorian Farmers Federation Grains Council. Another was a member of Food Science Australia, with research programmes on functional foods, also involving GM crops. See: http://www.foodscience.csiro.au/ [Accessed 27 April 2010]. For example, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, which prioritised GM crop R&D from the early 1990s (Grains R&D Corporation 1993); and the Board of the Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre. Among the programmes of the latter is the development of salt-tolerant recombinant crop lines, one involving a CIMMYT Mexico researcher (see Mullen et al. 2009). Notably, CIMMYT have long been involved with the development and promotion of GM crops internationally and work closely with agribusiness and biotechnology corporations (Hindmarsh 2008), for example, Syngenta. The 2003 Act was amended by the Gene Technology (GM Crop Moratorium) Amendment Act 2007 No 86, assented to 7 December 2007. Since then the date has been extended to July 2021; see http://www.legislation. nsw.gov.au/viewtop/inforce/actþ12þ2003þFIRSTþ0þN/ [Accessed 2 January 2012]. See: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/archive/news-releases/agriculture/2007/choicegiven-to-nsw-farmers [Accessed 10 May 2010]. See note 2. For a detailed analysis of other (prior) events in Australian GM regulation that aimed to facilitate agbiotechnology development, see Hindmarsh (2008). For an excellent exposition of closure of controversy as a strategy of power, see Beder (1991).

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