Tirikatene Rino: Food Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Food Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18341. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I too am pleased to speak at the third reading of the Food Bill. This bill is a major improvement on the current laws as they stand which impinge on all food businesses across the country. As previous speakers have mentioned currently we have the Food Act which is 30 years old and way out of date and also some even worse Food Hygiene Regulations which are about 40-plus years old. They are highly prescriptive highly outdated and have led to a whole bunch of misalignment and inconsistencies among territorial authorities and local councils right across the country. It has been a nightmare for small businesses—or for all businesses operating in the food area—to try to navigate their way through dealing with all of the complexities and trying to fit within the parameters or the strict prescribed requirements in the existing legislation. Thankfully we can all now say haererā. Haererā to that regime and haere mai to this good bill.It is a voluminous piece of legislation and a long time in the making. Ten-plus years ago this legislation was conceived under the Labour Government. There has been a lotof work going on. I commend also the officials who have worked tirelessly over the years to craft this piece of legislation. It is a significant piece of legislation but also it is very well drafted because it covers the full ambit the full scope of all food businesses whether they be a small coffee cart or a marae that might have a little catering operation or café and right through to major food exports manufacturers meal producers and the like. So it is a significant piece of legislation. It is really positive for our country because as speakers have mentioned the food sector is so important to our country to our livelihood and to our standard of living.I just want to repeat this because it is really important that people comprehend these numbers. Eighteen percent of the working population in New Zealand are employed directly or indirectly in the food sector. There are around 35000 to 40000 regulated businesses that operate food businesses right across the country. But even more important is the turnover. Food retailers turn over some $26 billion a year total food manufactured in New Zealand is worth over $41.5 billion a year and the food sector as a whole contributes over 52 percent of New Zealand’s total value of exports. Those numbers alone really demonstrate how important and how crucial the food industry is to our country and to our way of life. That is why it is really important that we have this piece of legislation now which is up to date which is modern and which has brought us into the 21st century whereby we are speaking the same language as our important customers our trade customers overseas.An important aspect of our trade and our export industries is that we benefit from free-trade agreements. Mutual recognition of our food safety systems is an important element of those free-trade agreements and they give our exporters an advantage in a highly competitive market place. It is really important that this piece of legislation is enacted so that we are walking the talk and we are providing a world-class modern risk-based flexible food safety system. By doing that we can give confidence to our customers—not only to New Zealand food businesses but also to our own local consumers. As we know when you produce food—Māoris especially know this very well—and when you are hosting manuhiri your mana is on the line. Your mana is at stake when you host people and the last thing that you want to do and the last thing we as a nation would want to do to our manuhiri to our visitors is to have an outbreak of food-borne illnesses. I shudder at the thought of people falling crook or when we hear reports of serious outbreaks of—I will test Hansard people out—illness with names likecampylobacteriosissalmonellosis listeriosis other forms of -osis and E. coli and all those nasty food-borne illnesses.It is really important that we have legislation that is fit for purpose that is modern and that can deal with those high-risk businesses that are perhaps cutting a few corners or not being as stringent as they should be. It is also important that we are not putting unreasonable or overbearing compliance costs on those businesses or industries that really do not have to try to meet such high standards.One of the really commendable aspects of this bill is the sliding scale - type approach based on the risk that various industries and businesses have and the food they produce. Obviously a coffee cart is nowhere near as high risk as a major meal producer or exporter so this bill does very well in terms of capturing all of those different types of industry participants in the food sector which as I mentioned in previous contributions is very important to Māori. The primary sector the land and sea our bounty that we have in Aotearoa—Māori are major major stakeholders in those sectors. My colleagues across the floor know them well. Mr McKelvie would knowAtihau-Whanganui Incorporation up at the Whanganui River andMorikaunui Incorporation and those major sheep and beef producers. Mr Ardern would knowParininihi kiWaitōtara Incorporation. Māori are major participants in those fields and they are also moving upthe value chain. They are moving up the value chain—such as the likes ofMiraka Ltd a major Māori-owned dairy processor taking on Fonterra and giving it a good crack as well. I need only talk about my own iwi down in the south.NgāiTahu are making major plays into dairy conversions and growing the milk supply from out of the south.This piece of legislation is important for all New Zealand all Kiwi businesses for consumers for our customers for our reputation and it is really important also for Māori.I would just like to conclude by talking about as I call it the COOL aspect of this legislation—country-of-origin labelling—and Supplementary Order Paper 440 by Damien O’Connor which unfortunately was not adopted by the Government. I am heartened by the remarks from the Minister that it will be looking into that issue because we were simply basing it on aligning country-of-origin labelling between New Zealand and our major export market over there across the Tasman. So I look forward to seeing some progress in that area hopefully because Kiwis do like to know where our kai is coming from. I think that if people go down to buy a single-product item if you have got a pork chop there or a pork belly people will look again if they know that it is from Ontario or from some big major hog producer over in North America. So we hope to see progress in that area but otherwise this is a very very great piece of legislation and I commend it to the House. Kia oratātou.