Campaign day 12: Knobs and nubs, who's to know?

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

We are told they are like a whole series of strands of spaghetti with little bits hanging off the side. Pardon?

It is day two of the contaminated corn scare and standing room only in Room G005 at Parliament Buildings.

The head of the Environment Ministry is explaining to science-deficient journalists how examining nucleic acids can detect if imported seeds are GM-contaminated.

Barry Carbon, a presumably GM-free import from Australia, has been in his job for eight days.

Now, he finds himself thrust into the midst of the hottest story of the election campaign, chairing a media briefing at the Government's request to defend decisions made 18 months ago. And - Labour hopes - allay public anger and anxiety.

To his left looms his boss, State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham, the bureaucrat's bureaucrat.

He is here to ensure Mr Carbon sticks to the facts and does not get dragged into the election campaign.

By being there, though, Mr Carbon has been dragged into the election campaign.

The smooth-talking Mr Wintringham admits the briefing is "most unusual".

But he has made an exception because "this is a matter of major national importance and there has been some confusion about the facts".

Mr Carbon - as smooth as an Aussie red - talks more bluntly of the "shit hitting the fan" and a "stuff-up" when authorities were alerted to the possibility that an imported shipment of sweetcorn seed was contaminated.

Was it?

Mr Carbon has read Seeds of Distrust, in which activist Nicky Hager alleges the Prime Minister and her colleagues covered up the planting of genetically modified seed from that shipment.

"Most of the information in there is accurate. I disagree, though, with most of the conclusions."

The briefing then explores the world of scientific method, a world populated by "false positives", "tolerance levels" and "knobs".

"If it's been deliberately genetically modified, the bits of the spaghetti have got knobs on the end of it."

But was the corn contaminated?

"They [the experts] couldn't say it was. They also can't, still can't to this day and never will be able to say with absolute certainty, 'No it wasn't'."

And that's the nub of it, if not the knob of it. No one can be sure. And that is why the corn scare remains a problem for Labour in this election.

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