Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you very much Mr Chair.Hon David Bennett: Great if one came from a farming area.MICHAEL WOOD: Ha! The Mt Roskill electorate has the largest area of farmed land in the urban part of Auckland City—the old Subritzky estate in Lynfield—Hon David Bennett: That's a reserve! And you want to put a train through it!MICHAEL WOOD: —Ha!—and we're very proud of it.But what we're also very proud of is our status as a nation that produces food that domestic and international consumers can have confidence in and this bill goes right to the heart of that issue. It addresses the recommendations of the independent Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident popularly known as IGAFICA"! And what that went to was the Fonterra false botulism scandal. And it was a scandal—it was a scandal because we had our biggest exporter and one of the biggest carriers of our flag on the international market forced into a position where it had to alert international markets to the potential of a botulism contamination of its product. Actually what we found out further down the track was that that wasn't quite right. We have just got to get this stuff right—our economy depends on it jobs depend on it our international reputation depends on it.In my remarks in this committee stage debate I just want to do a little bit of a deep dive into a few specific issues that were raised at select committee stage by one of my former select committees the Regulations Review Committee. The reason that feels important to me is that in the end a lot of this bill is about process—it's about having good processes to support food safety. But what the Regulations Review Committee pointed out in its letter to the select committee was that some of the processes in the original bill needed a bit of tweaking to make sure that it was fit for purpose and I just want to comment on those.One of the first ones relates to the commencement date of the bill. The Regulations Review Committee has been assiduous in its comments to select committees about needing to be a little bit sharper about this issue. What the Regulations Review Committee points out is that a number of provisions in the bill had an open-ended implementation date.I do just want to note that over the course of this evening we've had to put up with insufferable calls from the Opposition about the Government putting up legislation that they seem to think isn't all that important. Well this is an important piece of legislation. It goes straight to our food security it goes straight to a constituency that that party presumes to represent and yet here we have a bill that was originally put forward by a former Minister sitting on that side of the House that had an open-ended implementation date and wasn't passed by that former Government. Well here we have a Government that is going to pass it and we're going to make sure it's passed with clear implementation dates as well. So instead of having that open-ended implementation date the select committee quite wisely—and the Government picks this up—is going to make sure that the implementation date is two years after the date on which it receives Royal assent. That is clause 2(1)(b) of the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. That was a very sensible suggestion of the Regulations Review Committee and I think it's appropriate that the House notes that and we support that as this bill passes to the next stage of the legislative process.The other changes I wanted to touch on in my time are changes to the sections relating to the consultation around the regulations or secondary legislation that might flow out of this bill. This again is noted in the comments of the Regulations Review Committee. This is a really important thing: when we in the House pass Acts of Parliament we often give to agencies the ability to put into place secondary legislation—that is regulations that have a real legal effect on the lives of people and businesses. What was pointed out by the Regulations Review Committee is that a number of the regulations originally in this bill—the regulation-making powers—did not have attached to them any requirement to consult the people who would be affected by them. So those changes if members want to turn their eyes to them make changes to section 163(2) to require that the director-general does carry out consultation and take into account the outcomes of that consultation when making a number of regulations under this bill. I think that is a very sensible change. They may seem like some arcane points but they are important points by the Regulations Review Committee that make this a better bill. Thank you Mr Chair."