Sage Eugenie: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9972. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill. The Green Party is pleased to be supporting this bill. When you look at the latest annual reports of the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority the previous five annual reports have highlighted the need to amend the principal Act to provide more flexibility in the sector and to appeal to a broader range of sector groups. I wonder just what priorities the Government has that it has not moved faster to introduce this bill given the much-trumpeted objective in the Business Growth Agenda to double primary sector exports by 2025 and to increase the ratio of exports to GDP to 40 percent by 2025—especially when the changes that are in this bill are based on a review of the Act that started in 2010 and there has been wide consultation with the sector.So why the delays for nearly 6 years? I would posit that it is due to the Government being totally seduced by the dairy industry and the formerly high dairy payouts by Fonterra’s strategy of growing the milk supply by 2 to 3 percent annually and its myth that there are no limits to growth that it could continue to push for increased milk production by allowing the dairy industry to freeload on the environment through the weak rules the Government has in relation to land use and water pollution and the exclusion of agriculture from the emissions trading scheme. The Government’s preoccupation with dairy as the way to grow exports and the way to grow GDP has meant that it has neglected the horticultural sector and the need to better market our fruit and vegetables and nuts and the need to update this 30-year-old legislation.The current Act passed as Damien O’Connor noted in 1987 by the last Labour Government promotes the export marketing of horticultural products by providing a structure under which to have recognised quality standards and a structure to allow marketing to be coordinated through export marketing strategies and export licensing. Whether you are a grower a pack-house operator or an exporter of particular products such as avocados you opt to work within the Act’s framework through the Horticulture Export Authority which licenses exporters and monitors compliance. So the principal Act and the changes in the bill are important because they help to give growers some control and influence over exporter behaviour in order to protect the reputation of their products.I note that in 2012 only 15 percent of our fresh horticultural exports were done under the principal Act. As at September last year there were 76 export licences issued by the authority and they were held by 54 different entities across the nine different product groups like avocados blackcurrants boysenberries buttercup squash nashi pears summer fruit and tamarillos. They are only some of the fantastic fruit and vegetables that New Zealand produces that are suitable for export. Certainly this is a growing sector up by 12 percent in the year to June 2015 a 25 percent increase in total export receipts and record earnings of nearly $300 million. So that is a major improvement on 2013-14 when the high New Zealand dollar really hurt exporters.But we need a regime and this bill helps to provide it that allows and helps the growers pack-house operators and exporters to increase their market share to develop new markets to add value to their products and to coordinate their marketing. The bill helps to do this by for example allowing an exemption from the licensing requirements for a year. If there are exporters that have a joint venture.They are exempt from getting a licence if they already hold a licence as individuals. The bill is making only small changes to the Act but it will provide more flexibility and clarify some of the Act’s current provisions. It replaces the one-size-fits-all approach with a multi-tier system that provides for different requirements. It also significantly increases the fees up from $4000 to $10000 for offences under the Act. It means that there will be greater information sharing between the Horticulture Export Authority the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries.The delay in introducing this bill is not the only example of the Government failing to respond to the needs of the horticultural sector and failing to help it reach its potential. The Horticulture Export Authority has long called for country-of-origin labelling for fresh fruit and vegetables because it believes that this will help benefit quality production. And yet the National Government has resolutely opposed this and we do not have mandatory country-of-origin labelling. That means that fruit and vegetables in local shops do not have to have any identification of where they have come from. We had the hepatitis A scare last December which was associated with imported berries but that hit local producers because there was no way of consumers knowing whether they were buying imported or local berries unless the company had chosen to label the products itself. The Green Party will introduce mandatory country-of-origin labelling of fresh and single-ingredient foods so that consumers will know how their food is produced where it has come from and what food they are choosing to buy and eat and feed to their families.In Australia any food product must identify the country of origin of whatever makes up more than 50 percent of the total production costs of that product. Given the similarities between the markets if we had similar rules to Australia it would simplify it a lot for both food manufacturers and exporters who are sending their products to both markets. New Zealand is such a small market that it is often uneconomic for the large food manufacturing companies to change their labels just for us.This bill is a good one but there is much more that the Government could be doing to grow horticulture exports to protect the reputation that we have when we market our primary production overseas by doing much more to ensure that we have clean water. We cannot market summer fruit boysenberries and avocados as coming from clean green New Zealand unless we do much more to give integrity to that brand by protecting water quality and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to ensure that we have a stable climate.