Greens Playing Kiwis For Suckers

Bluegreens Bluegreens is an independent group of New Zealanders advising the National Party on environment and heritage issues.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12 July 2002

GREENS PLAYING KIWIS FOR SUCKERS

The Green Party is playing New Zealanders for "a bunch gullible suckers" over the GM issue, according to Terry Dunleavy, national convener of Bluegreens, a voluntary organisation that advises the National Party on environment and heritage issues.

"And they're being helped by gullible media who seem thus far to have swallowed the Greens' propaganda," he added.

"The Green Party's economies with truth on issues such as genetic modification makes them unfit to be in Parliament, let alone having any influence on any future government. They are the real culprits in this current fiasco. Labour may have been less than transparent, but the Greens have been deliberately misleading, and for that they should be punished at the polls," declared Mr Dunleavy.

"This whole GM saga has been an orchestrated litany of scaremongerings, initiated principally by Jeannette Fitzsimons and Sue Kedgeley, who have spent the last three years trying to demonize new discoveries in the science of genetics, a science which has so much potential to alleviate starvation and suffering throughout the world. Their sole purpose has been a quest for votes, and their poll standing shows how many good people have been sucked in.

"One of the indicators of their success is the widespread use of the word 'contamination" in the present sweet corn debate. My dictionary defines contaminate as 'pollute, infect, corrupt' with 'poison' as one of the synonyms. My research tells me that the alleged 'contaminant' in this case, even though it was not present, is the BT11 strain of bacillus thuringiensis, which has been approved the European Union and the US Environmental Protection Agency, as a desirable alternative to insecticides for the control of corn borer larvae and similar predators which adversely affect the yield and quality of sweet corn; and, most importantly, pose no risk whatsoever to human health or wellbeing.

'Yes, any BT11 sweet corn has been modified; but in a benign and beneficial way; not in the poisonous way that these vote-seeking Greens would have us believe.

"This is a perfect example of why the Royal Commission recommended New Zealand to proceed with GM, but with caution and on a case by case basis, so that beneficial uses of gene technology can be pursued and tested, and the doubtful or disadvantageous either put on hold or rejected outright," said Mr Dunleavy.

"The media conference held by the Ministry of the Environment yesterday revealed how well our new surveillance, testing and regulatory regime is working, with the information that one shipment of seeds was destroyed because officials were not confident that it was GM-free, and two others were destroyed because their importers refused to submit their product for testing.

"The extent to which the Greens think we're all a pack of dummies is shown by their expectation that we will swallow as a coincidence a book by serial protester and conspiracy theorist Nicky Hager, published by someone on the Green Party's list, smack in the middle of an election campaign.

"I have every confidence that New Zealanders will agree that our Bluegreen vision of New Zealand's future environment, is the way to go in this defining election," said Mr Dunleavy.

Ends

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