Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well as we've heard today this is a very short piece of legislation—it's basically one page—and we've established that it is there to increase the time frame to allow these regulations to be put in place and I note that the Minister for Food Safety's just said that it is a precautionary measure in terms of leaving the time frame open enough to be able to do the work. But I do look forward to that work being done. The Primary Production Committee did put the work through with no amendments. There's very little to amend on here really other than perhaps amending the date so there wasn't a great lot of work to do on this. But I do notice that the select committee—I wasn't on the select committee at the time but they did look and mention a shorter extension if possible. So we know why we've extended the time frame but I will note again that it would be great if we could do it sooner rather than later so we can provide certainty. But also it's more than certainty. It's giving our own natural products manufacturers in New Zealand an opportunity not only to compete globally but to compete in New Zealand—and under COVID that is more important than ever. We're hearing a lot these days about the tourism industry and sadly you know the fact that we can't have any more tourists in the country at this point in time. And you know that's acceptable. That's the way it is under COVID right at this point in time. However there are ways that we can get to people in other parts of the world in our exports and our exports thankfully are going particularly well at the moment but it does make it very hard for our natural products to compete and I'll give you an example here. A member produces two identical products with the active ingredient Curcuma longa Longvida—one version in New Zealand and one in Australia. The Australian version can make the claim that it decreases mild joint aches and pains and relieves inflammation" whereas the New Zealand - labelled product can only say "promotes general health and wellbeing". So these are some of the restrictions that we're finding our own New Zealand producers under. So I get that we need to do it properly but I also do understand that when we're setting regulations in this country yes it's important that they are appropriate to the country; however there's a lot of world—we're one of the only countries in the OECD that don't have one of these regulatory regimes and so there is plenty of information that we can call on as this has been put together. So Natural Health Products NZ who make up about 85 percent of the sector has really conveyed its frustrations to the select committee saying that they support this piece of legislation as a stopgap measure—and that's really all we can describe this piece of legislation as. The regulations are shockingly out of date. But they said and I quote "we have no choice but to very reluctantly support the Bill in order to ensure that there's at least some kind of regulation in place for natural health products. At best it is a case of 'something … better than nothing—but only just.' [The] industry has been calling for a modern regulatory regime for over 20 years"—and that's a pretty sad comment because we can throw things backwards and forwards across the House at times about who did what and who didn't do what but we have an onus on us all now. We're all supporting this bill and we do have an onus on us to ensure that we keep following up on this to ensure that it does happen. So really the advantages as I said before providing higher assurance for consumers—if we can do that with Australian products then we should be able to do it with New Zealand products at this point in time. It enables consumers to find out more about the products. So when you write on there "promotes general health and wellbeing" well so does an apple an orange or a banana or a carrot. So you know it's very unfair that actually at this point in time that's all that they're able to put on their products. As I said before removing export barriers—because you know it's pretty difficult for them to compete in a global market where others can put a whole lot more information on their products than what we can and what this would do then is enable the industry to expand faster. It would allow the industry to employ more people and it would contribute more to the economy especially in the regions where a lot of these things happen. I would probably even note that New Zealanders walking into a supermarket or pharmacy or wherever still have those same two choices and I'm sure that many of them would pick up the New Zealand product if it had the same amount of information. But what it also does is it makes it harder for questionable products to be marketed and sold here because it's very easy for anyone to be able to put "promotes general health and wellbeing" on a product when actually it would be a real advantage to know much more than that. So look I'm not going to take up too much more time on this piece of legislation this afternoon because it's a short piece of legislation and I'm pretty keen for the Government along with the ministries both to get on with it and get some regulations in place for this industry. Thank you Mr Speaker."