O'Connor Damien: Inquiries Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Inquiries Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12773. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman):I am very pleased to make a speech in the House to support as Labour is supporting this necessary piece of legislation the Inquiries Bill which is being rushed through. Just briefly in response to the previous speaker Simon O’Connor who was trying to make pathetic excuses for why the Government sat on this for so long saying that there are 60 pieces of legislation on the Order Paper I have to say that it is a very light Order Paper and most select committees have a very light workload. That is no excuse. The bottom line on this is that the Government thanks to the Hon Rick Barker I would say was able to pick up a piece of legislation that had been developed with wisdom back in the last Labour Government and was deemed necessary but of course was parked up by the NationalGovernment. This Government was lucky that it could pick it up off the ground. I think “pick up the ball” was the analogy used by the member Simon O’Connor over there. It probably got flattened and had to be pumped up a few times really in the last few years. But anyway none the less it is still a useful piece of legislation.It is with some sadness of course that we read the motivators for the Government in this. As I have said in a previous speech deregulation by Governments has resulted in incidents and occasions that unfortunately have led to a lot of very negative outcomes—the worst of course being the Pike River disaster and the most costly of course being leaky homes. There is a legacy of National Government deregulation experiments that have failed and now we are bringing in a piece of legislation that will allow inquiries to investigate why these things happened. For some people the answer is really obvious and prevention is always better than a cure but none the less it is important that we have legislation that allows us—Mike Sabin: Fantastic but nothing ever happened under a Labour Government angelic-like that they are.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The member over there should be very conscious of inquiries. There are lots of them going on over there at the Independent Police Conduct Authority. Can I say that we need to ensure that inquiries are effective are a good use of resource and deliver the wisdom that we require from them. We do not have these inquiries for retribution particularly the ones that will come under this legislation. They will be we hope for the garnering of wisdom and the implementation of recommendations that will prevent incidents whatever they are big or small from occurring.The most recent one of course is around Fonterra and food safety. I have to say that the Speaker turned down my request for an urgent debate today on the basis that this is an ongoing matter and it is with some sadness that I accept that reality. Deregulation of food certification as has occurred in the dairy industry has been very successful for a long time—I acknowledge that. I know that the Assistant Speaker in the Chair has a great deal of wisdom in the area of dairy in his region. It has performed outstandingly well for a long time but the industry is in a new competitive environment. It is one where there is pressure on who can get suppliers to provide the milk and then who is going to sell into the market place. That competition dare I say drives new pressures internally and we hope that it does not ever cause companies to take shortcuts particularly when it comes to food safety. But if it does cause them to do that then we need to have a proper agency that has the ability to monitor to intervene and to stop any food produce going from New Zealand that is substandard in any way.This inquiry of course has been initiated by the need for an investigation into that food safety regime and I think that it will discover that a higher level of Government oversight is required. There is more resource needed. My good colleague the Hon Annette King comes into the House. She knows full well that we need an independent agency uncompromised by any other obligations—set up by the previous Labour Government and absorbed into the Ministry for Primary Industries by the National Government because it wanted to cut costs and deregulate—and that provides proper oversight without fear or favour to any part of any primary industry sector to say that this food meets the specifications of the customer and is safe for us to export.We saw yesterday another incident not of food safety but of higher levels of nitrate than the customers wanted and expected in a shipment of milk powder from the country. In the Chinese market nitrates have been associated with possible contamination by melamine when you go back. That is why China is so sensitive to it. That is why when we tested it here we should have identified those high levels before it got on the ship. That is indeed what used to happen in this country. But what we are seeing with the competitive pressure to get out into that market—China is a vast and growing marketwith huge opportunities and we want to deliver to China the highest-quality safest food possible—dare I say you know maybe someone is taking shortcuts by putting it on the boat and getting it into China before it has been properly tested.I do not want to prejudge what the outcomes of this investigation might be but they are very very important. The provisions laid down in this bill have been rightfully scrutinised by Parliament and we hope have provided the best outcome. My colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard of course put up Supplementary Order Paper 332 wanting a little more openness and transparency. I do not think that it has got through so we are going to have to trust the Government that it will do this. We should not forget though in relation to this Fonterra inquiry that it is a ministerial inquiry. The Ministers are ultimately responsible for the outcomes and in fact they can discuss the terms of reference with the chair of the inquiry. OK I am a bit uneasy with that I have to say. The chair is obviously appointed by the Ministers and reports to the Ministers and the terms of reference are in fact dictated by the Ministers in reality. In this particular case where I guess a lack of resources for a proper independent food safety agency is part of the problem here will the Ministers be honest and open enough to accept that criticism—Hon Annette King: And an inquiry.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —through the inquiry—and say that we have to up the level of resources here? The reality is that our exports to China have rapidly grown but the level of resourcing for oversight has not. Logic would say that something might occur at some point and indeed it has happened very very quickly. We have identified another problem. There probably will be others and I hate to say that. I am a staunch supporter of the dairy industry and ofFonterra’s position in the international market place. It is our biggest and best company and the most successful thing to come out of this economy full stop—the most successful. We cannot afford to have the company falter or fail. We must support it but it needs oversight and it needs guidance.The dairy industry grew because of legislation and the oversight that that provided. It is now deregulated. The least we can do is provide proper oversight objective assessment and high-quality testing for all the products it produces to ensure that we continue to maintain the reputation for the highest-quality safest food from any country. Almost 40 percent of the world’s tradable product is in dairy. This is huge. I hope that the Ministers in holding this inquiry do not compromise an honest outcome because they are reluctant to criticise their own funding formula which has effectively seen $26 million cut from the Ministry for Primary Industries. The Minister gets up and says that we have a world-class biosecurity system and a world-class food safety system. The inquiry into Fonterra will identify whether that is true or not. I hope that the Government is prepared to fund the resources to make sure that it does not happen again.