Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd just like to talk to Supplementary Order Paper 53 on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) in the name of the Minister in the chair Aupito William Sio. That's in regard to the insertion of new Part 15A of the Food Act 2014.Now we all realise in this House the importance of food security to our country as we are an exporting country of food products and a primary product - producing nation. So part of the role of our legislative requirements around food safety is to maintain the level of strength of those rules and regulations. It is an area which constantly has new challenges come upon it and often the legislation isn't quite as good as it should be or has room for improvement.This amendment here that the Minister has put forward is one of those situations where there is a challenge to the system that hasn't been reflected in the legislation that was set out in the first place and needs some reflection and a bit of a change to make it more effective. So I congratulate the Minister for bringing it forward and I know that it will pass through this House with unanimous approval because it's something that's actually very much needed to tidy up you could say the original Food Act of 2014.It really looks at the powers of the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to publish privileged statements for the purpose of protecting human life or public health or informing the public." When that was passed in the original Food Act that intention was only partially achieved and there was a need in this Supplementary Order Paper to give that intention "full effect by removing a restriction on the chief executive's ability to delegate the power to publish those statements." Now some may think that that's a long-winded explanation but there is actually a very important public interest case that relates to this and this was in regard to what happened with Fonterra and the whey protein case where one of the aspects of that when it actually happened was that the MPI officials and the CEO realised that they didn't have quite the powers that they thought they did and were quite constrained in their immediate ability to deliver a solution to a problem like that.When you come to a food security issue a food integrity issue a food safety issue New Zealanders need to act thoroughly and quickly and in a timely manner and anything that would restrict the timeliness of that reaction is a restriction that would hurt New Zealand processors and New Zealand producers and ultimately the consumers. In an international market where basically any failure of a product will be online within a matter of minutes and around the world within a matter of minutes it's important that we have a system that is very flexible and can adjust and react quickly to those situations. We were found wanting in that case; the situation wasn't as reactive as it should be. MPI felt that if it had had this power it would've actually given them more opportunity to react and to undertake activities a lot quicker.So that's really one of the big drivers behind what's happening here today. It's a fundamental reform that was done in the Food Act but didn't take into account quite the situation that might arise where the chain of command that was anticipated would be there might not be quite in that space at that time and we needed to react and make judgments and decisions on behalf of New Zealand producers and the New Zealand brand and this is something that does need to be sorted out.So I think the Minister's done a great job in getting that sorted out today and I look forward to this bill passing through. He's a pretty good Minister actually. He's not a bad guy. He's one of the better ones you know. I know it is the last day and it is late so you know you've got to give the dog a bone before you go—ha ha!"