E&OE
5 June 2008
Newshour, BBC World Service, London
OWEN BENNETT-JONES: Well the Foreign Minister of Australia, Stephen Smith, has been at that meeting for a couple of the days – you can’t have been there for the third day because he’s here in the studios. Thanks for coming in and I know you saw the British Foreign Secretary last night and I just wanted to ask you about the food summit – do you agree with David Loyn that actually something did get achieved?
STEPHEN SMITH: I think it has been a good start. I think it has helped focus international community attention on the crisis, I think it has helped focus the world’s attention on the crisis and I think it has clarified that the international community’s response has to be two stage. Firstly, application of immediate humanitarian assistance in the areas of greatest need and vulnerability, and secondly, we’ve got to have a longer term policy response which goes to some of the complicated causes of the spiralling price of food.
BENNETT-JONES: Let me put to you then, the long term problem that there’s not enough food in the world, there are too many poor people and very few very rich people...
SMITH: Well what’s the cause of high food prices – we’ve got rising fuel costs and rising input costs, fuel fertilizer, we’ve got increased consumption, a lot of that coming from developing economic power houses, a move to different modes of consumption, so greater consumption of proteins, so diversion of food stocks to animal feeding stocks and quite clear, we’ve got adverse consequences from drought or climate change. The adverse consequences of drought have affected our own country’s production. So our response has to be greater production, greater yields – that means agricultural research and development, adaptive techniques, we got to be smart about it.
BENNETT-JONES: Is GM the answer?
SMITH: Well, GM has to be part of the mix. There are strong views differently held about GM, a number of different countries have their regulatory arrangements. But it has to be subject to consideration.
BENNETT-JONES: Is Australia for it?
SMITH: We have a two stage regulation of GM, we have a national gene technology regulator to whom applications can be made and for the first year we’ll see a GM canola crop go in on a reasonably large scale, but because we are a federated state a couple of our states have got their own capacity and they have a moratorium on GM.
BENNETT-JONES: So you’re starting it?
SMITH: Starting, yeah. But to come back to, if you like, the first step – the humanitarian assistance. I announced in the run up to the conference a $30 million package and today I’ve announced an additional package of $9 million to the World Food Programme for Pakistan on the Afghanistan border, $8 million for Zimbabwe and $2 million for North Korea. So, Australia wants to be a good international citizen and make a humanitarian response but we also believe that those longer term responses have to be made and that longer term response also includes trade liberalisation. We have a very strong view that the crisis we have in food security adds to the argument that greater trade liberalisation in the agricultural area will actually be of assistance. So we think that there’s an even stronger argument now for a good outcome in the forthcoming Doha round.
BENNETT-JONES: You talk about these long term solutions, basically technological, and yet it’s interesting isn’t it that the three places you mention for your emergency aid – Zimbabwe, North Korea and the tribal areas – are all atrociously governed you could argue. Is that the problem, rather than technology?
SMITH: Well certainly, Australia has been very critical of, adding another one, of the regime in Burma. Critical of the Burma regime, very critical of the brutal Mugabe regime and we’ve been critical of the North Korean regime, but that hasn’t stopped us saying if we can get a humanitarian response direct to the people of either Burma, Zimbabwe or North Korea then we should do so. We’re doing that direct through the World Food Programme. I thought and I said this before the conference, Mugabe’s presence at the conference was frankly an obscenity, this is a leader who inherited one of the world’s premier agricultural producing countries, has taken it to a state of bankruptcy so far as its agricultural production is concerned and has used starvation and food aid as a political weapon against his people.
BENNETT-JONES: He says its sanctions.
SMITH: Well, he would say something other than accept the responsibility that he’s been in power for over a 20 year period and has seen his country wrecked and ruined as a consequence.
BENNETT-JONES: Could I just bring you back to that point, if you’re looking for solutions and the problems are in failed states, lets call them, then isn’t the answer to try to cope with failed states. Its plasters (Band-Aids) rather than long term solutions.
SMITH: This is not just a failed state issue. This is adverse consequences of climate change that requires looking at adaptive techniques. This is greater consumption by the emerging economic powerhouses of China and India with developing middle classes change of consumption pattern. It’s not just a problem of failed nation states or difficult nation states; this is an international community problem. And, one of the problems we’ve got to address is that in the failed states, or the states that are governed badly by brutal regimes or regimes that don’t respect human rights or the will of the people or democracy. We have an additional problem but this is a problem that the international community needs to address. One of the adverse consequences of course is that with lack of food security we’ve seen riots in the streets which add to the difficulty of maintaining peace and security and stability, either at a particular location or a region.
BENNETT-JONES: Ok Stephen Smith, thank you very much.
SMITH: Thank you.
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