Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable senator raises an interesting point. The word ‘threat’ is not defined in the legislation—you are quite right. It is an everyday, ordinary English usage term and it is simply to be read as that. In relation to the relationship with the emergency, if you are looking at section 72B(2)(a), it says:

... that there is an actual or imminent threat to the health and safety of people or the environment ...

We are talking about imminent threat to the health and safety of people or to the environment. Subsection (3) talks about, among other things, a threat from industrial spillage. It all has to relate back to the head provision, which is ‘an imminent threat to the health and safety of people or the environment’. Clearly, a threat from industrial spillage would be a threat to the environment. It would be imminent and it would be actual. You are quite right to raise the question about whether a genetically modified organism would assist in that process. It may or it may not but, if it is a possibility and would assist in that sort of emergency, the government would like to be able to use it.