McAnulty KieranKIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a tremendous honour to stand here and speak in favour of this the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill which as has been mentioned by many contributors tonight is about establishing a very simple principle: that consumers should know what it is that they are buying.I want to commend Steffan Browning for introducing this bill originally and of course Gareth Hughes a comrade from the Green Party for carrying this through the select committee stage when it wasn't all that straight forward. The principle at stake here—I would have assumed that it would get universal support across the House right from the get go but it's not as straight forward as one might imagine. The idea of ensuring that single-origin food is adequately labelled so that consumers know where that product has been manufactured or grown is pretty straight forward. What took the select committee's time of course was when it became complex in the sense that there was more than one ingredient. How do we go about that? That was certainly the issue that dominated the discussions around the select committee process. And I suppose it's only right that we look to acknowledge the approach that the select committee took. By and large the National Party members the Labour Party members and the New Zealand First member in Mark Patterson—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member but it has come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.KIERAN McANULTY: Mr Speaker thank you very much. I hope you had a marvellous dinner break as did I. I enjoyed it very much. I caught up with both One News and Newshub which I found very entertaining this evening.It is of course a tremendous pleasure to resume this speech on the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I was only a minute and a half in to my speech when the dinner break started and I was just commending the members who have introduced this bill and have seen it through the House. Steffan Browning of course introduced this bill with an eye to ensuring that consumers were fully informed at the point of purchasing food so that they understood where their food was grown and produced. There have been some amendments and throughout the select committee process Gareth Hughes has steered this bill through that. He's not a member of the Primary Production Committee but of course he joined that committee when this bill was up for discussion and he's done a marvellous job.It's been a difficult road actually because of course this is not a clear-cut issue or situation. Perhaps you might think it would be. It's simply ensuring that consumers know where the food has come from but all the food that we eat is not always single origin of course. With a bit of meat it's pretty clear-cut. You've got some meat tell the consumers where it's from—easy. What about a tin of tomatoes? What about if those tomatoes are from Italy but the basil's from New Zealand—how do we go about that? What about those other food types that have got more than one particular type of food within them? It does get complicated.So this bill and the amendments that the select committee have made allow the responsible Minister to bring in regulations after a period of probably about 18 months. After some consideration they can bring in some regulations so that other food can be considered under this particular regime alongside those that are included. Just for those at home who are interested those that are included are only those of one particular type of fresh or frozen fruit vegetable meat fish or seafood" and are "fresh (even if previously frozen) or frozen and is not for example dried cured or pickled;". So perhaps you might start to get an understanding of how complex this became in discussions at select committee. You know it wasn't expected but it was an engaging process none the less.There were a lot of submitters—they were keen to have their say—of which probably the most enthusiastic were representatives from our pork industry. Although they may not necessarily be completely satisfied with how this bill has come about from the select committee I'm sure they are buoyed that as a result of the powers that this bill gives the Minister they will then be able to look at bringing in regulations that do benefit them.Take bacon for example. Now under the current law as it stands a company could bring pork in from overseas cure it here and label it "Product of New Zealand". Now with the New Zealand pork industry just like any other primary industries in this country that want to market their own products I imagine for most consumers in New Zealand if they buy bacon or ham or salami or whatever if it says "Made in New Zealand" they would assume that it was a product that was farmed here because we are a world leader in primary production and yet if you were to go and buy a steak from the supermarket you've a pretty safe bet that it was farmed here. The same could be said certainly for lamb; perhaps not so much for seafood and fish but for pork it is not necessarily the case. I think consumers in this country given our love of bacon and ham etc. would like to know if what they are eating was grown here or if it was simply manufactured here. In the eyes of the consumer I believe that that is significant.Another example might be fish. Now the fish could be caught anywhere in the world brought to this country and crumbed and as it currently stands it could be labelled a product of New Zealand. It's slightly misleading and I think if consumers were aware of that and if the price of the product was not necessarily a factor—we do want to perhaps at this point acknowledge that for a lot of people it's not necessarily a big deal where the food was made. It's just what is the cheapest and most nutritious for their family and we absolutely appreciate that. But when price is not a factor if consumers thought they were buying fish that was caught in this country under a system where they can have faith in the processes that are in place in the food safety regulations and regime that's currently in place then they would do so assuming that that was a safe product. Potentially if a consumer was buying a product under the guise of "Made in New Zealand" but it was actually farmed or fished or grown or produced overseas and that consumer was not aware of that then that is not an informed decision and that is simply all this bill looks to introduce.It does also create offences so that this regime and this system that's going to be in place can actually be enforced. This is the sort of thing that in a voluntary system could not necessarily be effective because we want to make sure that our integrity as a food-producing nation is also intact.Primarily the point of this bill is to ensure that people are aware of what they're buying. But also as a country that exports our food and looks under this Government with a vision for primary industries where we're not just leaving things like perhaps the previous Government did and just hoping that the market might deliver but actually having a vision where we can strive towards extracting the highest value and targeting the most discerning consumer—doing that in a system where the New Zealand product is duly recognised particularly when other countries have similar systems in place is I think a right step.I acknowledge submitters like Federated Farmers who whilst at an executive level agreed with the principle behind this bill—the red meat sector were concerned about potential retaliation from other countries. If we're making them label their products so that Australian producers could sell their steak in New Zealand supermarkets and not be required to label it as Australian meat then they might make us do the same over there. But I say good—bring it on—because our products are better than theirs. Ours are more nutritious and more environmentally sustainable and we have really quite high animal welfare standards that we should be proud of as a nation. We should be wanting to sing it from the rooftops when we are selling New Zealand products overseas and I don't think it's anything to be scared of if other countries want to bring in a similar country-of-origin labelling regime like we are proposing here.It is good news for our exporters it is good news for our brand as a primary-producing nation and it is certainly good news for consumers. I for one do not want to be buying meat assuming that it is New Zealand grown and finding out that it's not. I don't want to do that with fish. I certainly want to be informed if I was purchasing any other product of a single origin. This bill under the leadership of Gareth Hughes provides that certainty for consumers and I have no hesitation in commending it to the House.Bill read a second time."