Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): The Labour Party is very enthusiastic about this bill as you can tell. I am very pleased to stand and speak in favour of the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I am pleased to reaffirm the support from the Labour Party for this bill. I am very happy to congratulate Steffan Browning on putting forward a bill that is very simple and achieves I think a very good objective. I am acknowledging of the National Party which has shown willingness to progress this bill in line with those principles. And I am very pleased indeed to stand as the Labour Party's consumer affairs spokesperson in support of this bill as well.This is a concept that the Labour Party has supported for a long time. It has been on our policy book since 2011. Sometimes good things do take time and we are quite open to other parties picking up good ideas and marching in concert with them. This bill is a good bill because it is about giving our consumers real choice. The thing about real choice in any sphere—this is a matter of common sense and it is also a basic foundation of economic theory as well—is that you cannot have real choice unless you have good information otherwise how are you making a choice?In respect of this issue we can think about a couple of barrels of apples at the supermarket. You can choose whether you want the green ones or the red ones. As a consumer you can perceive that information and make your choice. You can make a choice based on the taste that you know comes with the different varieties and that kind of thing. But how do you make a choice about the country of origin unless you are provided with that information at the point of purchase? The fact is that you simply cannot.This bill very simply attempts to deal with that issue and it says in the purpose of the bill that it is about providing a simple mandatory labelling system in New Zealand that provides consumers with accurate information about the country of origin of single component foods to enable them to make informed food purchasing decisions." A couple of important things within that—of course there is the reference to single-component food. We could of course go wider with this issue if we wished to as a House. But I think Mr Browning has quite correctly said "Let's start with something that is relatively simple." which is single-component food; not things that have multiple components where you can have difficulties and issues in terms of identifying where those different components have come from. I think that is a simple and pragmatic basis to go from.There are a couple of other reasons I think that we should be moving forward in support of this bill. One is that a lot of industry players are already there. In fact there is an increasing movement towards providing consumers with this kind of information. Why is that? It is because I think a lot of producers and a lot of distributors want their consumers to be able to make good choices. If you are looking at it from the perspective of New Zealand producers I can only see this being a good thing because while this bill does not push on anyone that they have to buy New Zealand products it gives them that information. And I think there are a lot of New Zealanders out there who if they are given good information and the option of choosing between similar products from New Zealand and from offshore will look at the New Zealand option very very seriously indeed.At the moment the information is really poor. I think about some supermarkets you go to where there are not good practices and you get these ridiculous signs that say "Product of either Australia or New Zealand." or some such. What information does that give people? I am sort of thinking about that in the political context. It would be like the equivalent of if we woke up on the morning of 24 September and the press said that we have elected either a Labour-led or a National-led Government. Or in the case of Epsom we have elected either Paul Goldsmith or David Seymour. Imagine the panic that would sow in the National Party ranks. People want clear information. That is all that this is about.The bill is supported by Consumer New Zealand. It has moved on this issue over the years. It is also supported by Horticulture New Zealand. It notes in its research that 70 percent of New Zealanders are very very supportive of this concept. I think one that we can say is there are some issues we want to look at in select committee. There are questions around enforcement and penalties costs—I do not think the costs are going to be a big issue; increasingly we have got good technology and good distribution networks that I think can absorb the costs pretty well but that needs to be looked at—the types of display that would be sufficient and also the definition of different types of food. I know when the Labour Party went down the track of looking at GST exemption on different types of foods it can open up some questions. But that is something that we can explore sensibly in select committee.In conclusion I can reaffirm that Labour is very keen to see this bill progress certainly to select committee and I think probably beyond that. It is simply about providing Kiwi consumers with the information that they need to make good choices. I do not see any strong arguments against that. I commend Mr Browning on putting forward the bill and commend it to other colleagues in the House. Thank you."