GPSA says state is ‘capped’ by GM moratorium

With the Greens’ bill ready to hit the Lower House next week, Mr Dabinett urged all parliamentary members to make sure there was sound justification on the way their votes landed.

“This isn’t one side or the other, it’s not regional versus metro SA,” he said.

“It’s a reflection on what they think of agriculture.”

While Greens MLC Mark Parnell says the moratorium has provided a significant price premium for the state's GM-free farmers, Mr Dabinett believes otherwise.

“If this moratorium is delivering so many benefits for the state, what are they?” Mr Dabinett said.

“Everyone wants to talk about canola and the grains industry, but it’s wider than that.

“It’s agriculture and it’s not what we have now, it is what we are not going to have in the future – and that really frustrates me.”

But what appalled Mr Dabinett the most was the lack of public consultation or independent work commissioned to warrant the moratorium extension.

“We would like to see the parliament finally get their act together and come up with an independent study and go through industry by industry, to see if this moratorium is adding value to the economy,” he said.

“I believe the agriculture industry, which is the backbone in our economy, is certainly capped at its potential because of the moratorium.

“There’s technology that delivers productivity and gains to our competitors and they can grab it and run with it, whereas we have to go through the parliament to take this moratorium down.”

Mr Dabinett said SA farmers were already a decade behind their competitors in Vic, NSW and WA.