Shadow of ‘corngate’ hangs over Gene Tech Bill
Sunday, 5 July 2026
Corngate retains a powerful resonance after 20 years, but opposition and even some coalition MPs say it’s not the reason the Gene Technology Bill has stalled.
They blame National obstinacy for refusing to “split” the bill, passing the portions all parties can agree on, including health research, and then debating the controversial parts more fully in a more open public debate.
National and ACT want the bill to pass to get genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) out of the laboratory and into field testing, to give more freedom to Kiwi scientists to use gene manipulation technologies to try to develop organisms to boost farm productivity, drought and disease resilience in plants, and even curb climate emissions.
But coalition partner New Zealand First says the bill is “far too liberal”, goes further than it agreed in its coalition agreement, and that the country’s “GE-free Nation” status should not be traded away lightly.
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A full legislative timetable means the bill is now effectively off the table before the election, but the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology would not expand on that to the Star-Times.
It was in 2002 that Corngate, as it came to be known, erupted in an interview on TV3 in which interviewer John Campbellchallenged Prime Minister Helen Clark over the import in 2000 of potentially genetically-modified corn seed.
Corngate eventually fizzled out as no evidence emerged that any corn was contaminated, and Clark told the Star-Times “the whole thing was bewildering”.
But NZ First’s Mark Patterson, Minister for Rural Communities and Associate Minister of Agriculture, believes the affair still has some resonance.
“It’s a little bit like there’s a nuclear-free status equivalent there, isn’t it? That we do take some pride in being GMO-free.”
Green MP Steve Abel believes it carries resonance for distrust in giant overseas companies who want to “convert your dinner plate to GE” to boost their profits, whether ordinary people like it or not.
Dr Craig Bunt, professor of agricultural innovation at the University of Otago, believes corngate’s remaining resonance is generational, however, and many young people haven’t even heard of it.
When Bunt’s classes at the University of Otago discuss genetic engineering around scenarios like eradication of pests, there is no knee-jerk fear reaction from the young students, he says.
That might be in part because they were not treated to the scary billboards in the aftermath of Corngate pushing the idea that genetic modification was a Frankenstein science, like the 2003 Mothers Against Genetic Engineering billboards of a naked four-breasted woman on her hands and knees being milked with dairy equipment.
“You can create imagery that raises fear quite easily,” Bunt says.
Corngate played a part in cementing the terms genetic engineering and genetic modification in the minds of the public as something to be feared, which scientist and businessman William Rolleston says was not helpful.
Rolleston says New Zealand will “mature” out of its fixation on the terms genetic modification and genetic engineering, which he considers profoundly unscientific.
Humans have modified organisms through selective breeding for millennia, and modern science merely presented a faster, more precise means of doing it, from which New Zealand scientists were effectively banned, he maintains.
“We will look back in 50 years’ time and say, why were we having this conversation?”
Labour’s Reuben Davidson, who heads the party’s resistance to elements of the Gene Technology Bill, says corngate does not does not come up in discussions within the party on the bill.
Labour’s position is that the bill does not contain sufficient safeguards, and would allow a government to override protections to prioritise “commercial expedience over careful custodianship”.
Both Labour and the Greens say consultation on the bill was poor, and both believe the bill does not meet the Crown’s Treaty “obligations”.
The organic farming industry has fought the bill saying their crops will inevitably be “contaminated” if GMOs are released into the environment, and MPs have listened.
“One of the key issues we’re trying to grapple with is how coexistence works, where organic and conventional farmers can have a choice as to what they might grow, and what method they might use,” Patterson said.
Rolleston says organic farmers are opposed to choice, and want to limit choice for all farmers, to the detriment of New Zealand agriculture.
The Gene Technology bill has revealed deeply divided opinions.
Opponents say consumers don’t want GE food. Supporters say most consumers don’t care, pointing to buying patterns at the supermarket, including in New Zealand where some imported foods contain ingredients from plants that have been genetically modified.
Opponents say ending our GE-free status would reduce the value of exports, and are incredulous the Government has done no economic analysis on the potential benefits, and costs. Supporters say there’s no evidence of pricing impacts on countries which embrace the science like Australia and Canada.
Opponents say that after 30 years the track record of GMOs overseas is underwhelming and that there are no GM products New Zealand needs. Supporters say this country cannot expect others to develop products for our conditions, and we need to have home-grown scientists do it.
When each side gets entrenched, they seek facts that fit their argument, and ignore those that do not, Bunt says.
“Then we end up getting this black and white situation when life is grey,” Bunt says.
Bunt sees science as being the pathway to a better future, and he does not see evidence that consumers, or overseas importers, would pay less for New Zealand products, if the country sacrificed its GE-free status.
And on corngate, Bunt points out that furore was not matched by a fuschiagate, when modified fuschia seeds were grown here, he says, or the even lesser-known fungigate.