Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you to the members for their I think very thoughtful and reasonable questions—except the one who said Can the member explain dried cured and pickled?" You're asking a vegetarian! I'm the last person in this House who should answer but I do know that those processes involve adding additional materials in the process of drying or curing or pickling—for example oil with pickles. So there was the line that was drawn by the Primary Production Committee by all parties which was that it didn't have to have additional ingredients. Now other ways that the line could have been drawn was "Does the primary product constitute 50 percent of the final product?"—say you know a bag of frozen vegetables for example. Would that be included if it was a three-way mix of carrots corn and peas? So the committee thought that the most practical workable and least costly or cheapest alternative was simply to have those products—so meat that has been cut and sliced but then crumbed wouldn't be in.The issue of surface treatment is quite an interesting one and shows how modified our food actually is. Often modern foods are surface treated—this is adding either a liquid or a powder on to the food. Probably the best example I can give is grated cheese. Here you've got a material—a powder I understand—for anti-caking which is applied to the shredded or grated cheese to stop it sticking together and easier to disperse. So that's why surface treatment was listed.When it comes to the issue of trade barriers this was a previous concern of different Governments of both colours in previous years over the debates around country of food origin being raised. Some submitters such as Beef and Lamb New Zealand did raise concern around barriers. It was very useful to have Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials come and advise the committee that it was possible to design this bill in such a way and that it was possible to implement it in such a way that it wouldn't be breaching the technical barriers for trade under the World Trade Organization—basically because this legislation enshrines principles of non-discrimination. Now I believe it would be a breach of international trade rules if we only required let's say hypothetical country X to label their products but no other country or a whole bunch of countries but not New Zealand. This legislation will apply evenly to food provided in all countries. So it was reassuring to get that advice. It has been a red herring that has been used by different public commentators for many many years as a barrier. The thing that I point out of course is that 55 other countries around the world have this exact rule to greater or lesser degrees and in most countries to greater degrees so it clearly hasn't been a barrier to trade in other countries.When it comes to clause 6 though I guess you could call it a suicide clause Dr Webb which is the idea that this legislation—this bill—actually won't exist in the future. Now this is simply because the committee decided the most workable solution was using the existing legislation not creating standalone legislation. The hypothetical scenario was posed that what if a Minister in the future decides to weaken our labelling laws. Now I don't have any concerns on that. Here we see Parliament passing and I hope continuing it unanimously and what we see around the world is a greater desire by consumers and a greater responsibility provided by Governments to those consumers to provide labelling information. So in Australia I've talked about the much more comprehensive regime they have presently. I think we're only going in one direction—that's towards greater labelling information.My vision of the future is of course that consumers can have much more information on the history of their products: the provision of where the product was grown or raised. That's where the issue of fish comes in. Now this is an issue where we have to do much more detailed work with Government officials and the regulation-making powers. Different jurisdictions apply different rules. In Europe I understand it's where the fish was caught for example. In New Zealand we've lost a lot of our fish-processing capability and we do see a great deal of fish actually processed offshore. So the question of whether a fish is caught in say international waters processed in the territorial sea but landed in New Zealand and sold here—how would that apply? We really do need to do more detailed work because of the complexities involved with the modern global economy.I think this will be my last call. I've tried to respond to all questions. I think we've seen a very good debate. What we do see ultimately though is legislation which is giving consumers more power and more information. It is going to be a workable system as we talked about with Stuart Nash's contribution earlier. I also believe it's a foundation that we can build on and move closer to the Australian regime but I do thank all members for their well wishes and their support."