O'Connor Damien; Borrows ChesterHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Age before beauty—sorry Mr Deputy Speaker. I have to congratulate Steffan Browning I guess on having persistence determination and a little bit of luck. He has in the House a bill and an issue that he has been passionate about for a long time. Labour will support the bill as acknowledged by our earlier speaker Rino Tirikatene. Labour in Government had a request from the Greens to support country-of-origin labelling and we turned it down at that time because it included a whole lot of issues that were actually complications around trade negotiations at that point and Labour could not support that. But since 2011 Labour has always advocated for country-of-origin labelling simply because it is sensible and National—I have to acknowledge its wisdom even though it comes very rarely and very late—has decided to support the bill because there is an issue of choice. Although the previous Minister for Food Safety Jo Goodhew got up and said that this is nothing to do with food safety I would disagree. What it is about is consumers' knowledge and about letting them make the calls. At the heart of that issue is the one of where food is produced and the integrity and credibility of the systems that produce that food. In New Zealand we have just passed the Food Act and we have very very high standards. In fact some would say that they are a bit excessive and over the top particularly for the small producer. But we have very high standards and I think New Zealanders—rightfully—can trust the systems that we have and people who buy our food around the world should be able to trust the systems of food production in New Zealand. I am not going to pick on countries but I can tell you it is not the same elsewhere in the world. Whether it is horse meat in the EU whether it is kangaroo meat in Australia or whether it is melamine in China we have got numerous examples of where there have been systems that have not delivered to the consumer the food that they believed they were buying. So it might not always be a food safety issue. I am sure eating good quality kangaroo meat is not unsafe but it is not what the consumer purchased and if you buy a product from New Zealand then you should know that it has been produced in the best-possible way by the best-possible people. We in fact have no other option. We are no longer the lowest-cost producers of food in the world. We were quite proud of that. We are no longer the lowest-cost producers. We have got high land values. We have got technology creeping in. We have got wages that actually should be a little bit higher I would have to say but they are certainly higher than many of our competitors and that is how it should be. They are not going to go down and they should not. So the cost of production will continue to climb. We have to be the Rolex watch producers of protein in the world. People have to be prepared to pay a premium for our products and when we do not have a country-of-origin labelling system in our domestic market people offshore say: What are you doing? How could it be so ridiculous that you claim to be the best in the world yet you're not proud to stamp and brand your own products in your own country?". You know this is not new. In fact we currently have no country-of-origin labelling because we have an exemption from Food Standards Australia New Zealand—an exemption so that we do not have to have compulsory country-of-origin labelling. This will just be bringing us into line with Australia. There are technical issues to ensure that what we put in place will indeed work for consumers and work for producers and I am sure that the select committee will go through that very very carefully. Horticulture New Zealand and Consumer New Zealand—they all support this. They know we need it. Canada had country-of-origin labelling in 1990 the United States had it in 2002 and Australia the European Union India China Japan and Russia have all got it and yet a country that prides itself on safe food production does not have country-of-origin labelling. The National Government and the National Ministers for Food Safety have rejected the calls time and time again for us to put it in place. Well Steffan Browning has snookered the Government and good on you Steffan. It is absolutely snookered between public opinion—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has long expired. Hon Damien O'Connor: I didn't have a bell. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You had a bell at 1 minute. Hon Damien O'Connor: Did I have a bell? My apologies Mr Deputy Speaker."