Act cries foul as Greens favoured at GE inquiry

Act MP Gerry Eckhoff, who missed out on being able to make oral submissions and cross-examine witnesses at the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, is crying foul over the Green Party's special status at the formal hearings.

And other participants have questioned the constitutional propriety of Green MPs, who may next year have to decide what happens to the commission's recommendations, also being given a chance to cross-examine witnesses during the commission's public hearings.

The commission has approved 109 of 265 applications for interested person status, but the Greens are the only political party approved.

Interested person status confers the chance to make oral submissions, cross-examine witnesses and deliver a summation to the hearing.

Mr Eckhoff said the commission's decision placed the Greens' opposition to gene technology ahead of other views on the issue.

Recognising the Greens' interest, but not Act's, implied the commission believed Act's core principles were inferior to those of the Greens.

"The royal commission has prejudged the importance of the fashionable and populist propaganda espoused by the Greens," he said.

"Act's desire is for all humanity to benefit from scientific progress, but from the commission's decision it is hard to see how this will happen."

Commission head Sir Thomas Eichelbaum said it would be difficult for many political parties to establish a case for special standing, because "it is in the nature of a political party that it represents some proportion of the general public."

But Sir Thomas said that the Green Party had made a "thoughtful presentation," arguing that its members were not of the general public, and that the entry of Greens into Parliament was to raise a "green" voice, rather than primarily to participate in politics.

"Several other political parties made applications, but their cases were not as strong and the facts advanced did not satisfy the commission that the required interest was established," he said.

Sir Thomas said legal counsel assisting the commission had suggested that the fact of being a political party did not provide sufficient interest, separate to the general public, but neither was there any principle keeping political parties out.

Another party to the hearings, the Life Sciences Network, a lobbyist for biotechnology companies, argued that the Green Party should look at whether its special status could later create a conflict of interest when the commission reported to Parliament.

Network chairman William Rolleston said: "The Green Party will be one of the parties that will have to consider what to do with legislation based on the report. [It] may end up putting itself in the role of being judge in a case it has declared it has a special interest in."

- NZPA

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