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Seminar - Richard Hindmarsh

Date: 5 October 2011 Time: 1.00 pm

Venue: FASS, Meeting Room 1

Dr Richard Hindmarsh

(Associate Professorat Griffith School of Environment, and theCentre for Governance and Public Policy in Griffith University)

Public inquiries and new modes of science, technology and environmental governance: Australian GM crop moratoria reviews prompt redefinition>

An 'archeological' excursion into the intensely contested terrain of Australian GM crops and its micro-politics finds public inquiries were deployed in Victoria and New South Wales, two key canola-growing States of Australia, as political technologies to end (in early 2008) moratoriums on commercial release of GM crops implemented five years earlier. Despite a range of interrelated environmental, social and economic concerns raised by a large majority of the numerous submissions, such concerns were narrowed in the public reviews' terms of reference to economic ones only (through the conduit/influence of earlier narrow national-state legislation constructed by 'biocrats'). That coupled to acclaimed 'independent', but stacked, review panels, as well as the limited black box public consultation process of submissions, advantaged powerful agbiotechnology interests (state and industrial) in favour of ending the moratoriums. This excursion is useful for: (i) better understanding of the shaping of the GMO technological agenda through technocratic episodic power and resistance to those contesting/questioning a GM futurenatural; and (ii) revealing further how public inquiries employed as political technologies informs participatory redefinition or redesign of public reviews concerning, here, controversial scientific and/or technological change/innovation at the intersection of society, environment and democratic legitimacy.

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Who can attend: Anyone