Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. Now I think it's laudable that New Zealand has an organic products industry and one that we already trust. I know that we trust it because if I went to the electorate of Auckland Central which Helen White campaigned in I could go to the Grey Lynn butcher and I could buy organic eye fillet and that's probably where the Labour MP Helen White buys her eye fillet because it's very very good. Then if we think about honey New Zealanders love mānuka honey. In fact we love it so much we tried to trademark the term mānuka". How is honey made? Well for those members of the Labour Party who are here today who don't know much about primary production honey is made by bees. They fly from the hive they collect pollen from flowers and flowering plants and trees and they fly back to the hive and then they feed it to the babies and the queen and they make honey—something along those lines. I'm an environmental engineer—OK?—not a biologist. But along the way there's a risk that some of these bees some of these beef cattle or some of these lambs will actually pick up contaminants and that means that they won't meet an organic purity standard. So if we think about the general policy statement which says "increase consumer confidence"—increase consumer confidence—well I could tell you that I'm 100 percent confident that if I go to my local organic butcher I'm getting an organic product because it wasn't that long ago that New Zealand lamb used to compulsorily be dipped in DDT and arsenic—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Sorry can I just remind members. We've had our sort of sparsely populated Chamber over the last few days but there are a lot more people in here and so the noise is travelling a lot more so can we just keep our voices down so that we can hear what the speaker is saying please. SIMON COURT: Thank you Mr Chair. It wasn't that long ago and I would expect that honourable members such as Eugenie Sage would concur that New Zealand's food products could have been hopelessly contaminated with arsenic with DDT with dioxins and with the residues of all kinds of products that were used in our manufacturing and on our farms. That could have been chlordane and lindane it could have been pentachlorophenol which was used to treat fence posts and railway sleepers or in fact as I mentioned New Zealand legislation required that sheep heading to the works be dipped for flystrike before they arrived at the works. There was a minimum time frame of about three weeks. Now no farmer worth his salt would bring all of his stock down from the high country put them in the yards run them through the dip and let them go back to the high country and then bring them back three weeks later to put them on the truck to send them to the works—that never happened. What used to happen was that the sheep were brought to the pens the truck was going to arrive in the afternoon and the farmer would run the sheep through the dip and often straight up the ramp and into the truck. So New Zealanders were eating a food product that was contaminated with DDT and arsenic but it wasn't a problem to New Zealand. It was our international consumers who raised this with New Zealand and that's one of the reasons why we stopped using products like DDT and arsenic to treat our sheep for lice and flystrike. We've come a long way—that's nearly 50 years ago. So when we consider why we need an organic products and production bill New Zealand businesses and New Zealand consumers have already signalled clearly what they want. They want safe food products. We have the Food Act which regulates food safety. It says what should go into food and what shouldn't. We have many other Acts of Parliament around what consumers should expect. Consumers should have confidence that if they go to the shop and they buy a product that says free range or organic that's what they're getting. And I'm not aware of any cases where somebody said "You know what? I went to the Grey Lynn butchery where Helen White most likely buys her eye-fillet steak and said 'I don't think this is organic enough.' "—I don't think it's organic enough! Now Helen and I have had a number of friendly chats at the Grey Lynn farmers market on a Sunday morning while we're shopping for organic produce together and I do not recollect Helen ever pointing out to me that she had a lack of confidence in any of the organic products to be found at the Grey Lynn farmers market.Now I've also spent a fair amount of time travelling around New Zealand as an ACT member of Parliament. Well actually Anahila Suisuiki makes a good point that it's actually Chlöe Swarbrick who's the member for Auckland Central but I've never seen Chlöe Swarbrick at the Grey Lynn farmers market. Hon Eugenie Sage: Point of order. I wonder if the member could come back to the bill and could—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The Chair will decide that thank you. Carry on.SIMON COURT: So I'd like to just talk about Teanau Tuiono's Supplementary Order Paper—Hon Member: Sound it out.SIMON COURT: Teanau Tuiono's—from the Green Party—Supplementary Order Paper. Now I've run into trouble today because we've been under urgency for some time and my pronunciation of both English and other words such as "Eskimo"—but we won't go there. Now I support agricultural production that works with ecological systems to sustain the health of soils ecosystems and people but isn't that what—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Mr Court that's unnecessarily provocative given what happened earlier in the day. Just carry on and just perhaps some good manners at this stage rather than anything else might be actually put on display. Carry on.SIMON COURT: That's right. So I think it would be fair to say that New Zealand farmers already produce agricultural products that work with the ecological systems and sustain the health of soils ecosystems and people. So while I think the intention of this Supplementary Order Paper 279 is laudable it doesn't add anything to what New Zealand farmers and primary producers and people who make organics products already do.And then if we consider ACT MP Mark Cameron's Supplementary Order Paper producers selling products—Tim van de Molen: Point of order? CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Sorry that paper does not relate to Part 1. In fact we are straying—we've been fairly liberal on that and I'll be looking to some very specific references to Part 1.SIMON COURT: Mr Chair I want to talk about increasing business certainty. Now New Zealand businesses rely on their brand their international brand. Whether they're selling organic kiwifruit whether they're selling organic milk or beef lamb and other products into the international market that's absolutely vital. But there's a big difference between selling products locally and internationally and the ACT Party fears that this bill will in fact impose unnecessary and undue costs on local manufacturers of organic products whether that be ice-cream cheese honey kiwifruit. Because while it's important that New Zealand maintains its reputation on the international stage for local people like myself and Helen White who shop at the Grey Lynn food market or if I go to other farmers markets around the country we can be confident because we've shopped there for a long time. And we know a lot of the growers and the primary producers and the people whose passion it is to make wonderful consumer products whether they be healthcare products—moisturiser you might put on your skin—homemade yoghurts and they are made to a high standard and to an organic one for an organic consumer who wants to buy those products.And as ACT member Damien Smith points out a lot of them also have probiotic and other properties which are really beneficial to people who have gastrointestinal conditions and who actually rely on the products that they buy from their local suppliers at farmers markets around New Zealand. They rely on them and they've always relied on them and they don't need a piece of legislation to tell New Zealanders whether they should continue to trust the organic products that they buy from their local farmers markets for example. So the ACT Party will be proposing Supplementary Order Papers and amendments to this bill. We also think that while this has been an urgent matter for some time—so urgent that in fact the Green member James Shaw repeatedly asked the Leader of the House Chris Hipkins "When will the "Organic Products and Production Bill come to Parliament?"—now it's here we in the ACT Party are surprised that no other MPs in National or Labour appear to want to debate the bill. So we invite them given how excited they were about this bill to take the opportunity to debate it. Thank you Mr Chair."