Parker DavidThird ReadingHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I present to the House a legislative statement on the Organic Products and Production Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon DAVID PARKER: I move That the Organic Products and Production Bill be now read a third time.Can I begin by thanking everyone who's worked hard to get this to the point that it is—there has been a lot of work on this. It's quite a large bill; this was evidenced by the number of parts. The Primary Production Committee did a lot of work knocking it into shape.Can I acknowledge the useful feedback received from stakeholders during the development of this bill over the past three years. There's probably only one negative in this for me in that it's probably the end of the series of puns that we had through the years from the Hon James Shaw as he asked the Leader of the House about progress on the stalled Organic Products Bill but they got increasingly bad and so I'm pleased to see that we are moo-ving" on. Ha ha!We've delivered a bill to increase consumer confidence in purchasing organic products. This will improve outcomes for businesses making organic claims because they can be more confident that they will be recognised and that they're meeting the required standards. Through this we also facilitate international trade in organic products. It's an important growth area for New Zealand with over half of our organic produce now being exported overseas. Our major trading partners such as the US and the EU increasingly expect others to have an organics regulatory system that produces similar outcomes to their own. I understand that there's—I think—a 2026 deadline in respect of exports into Europe. If we didn't pass this legislation by then we would be creating problems for our organic exporters. Therefore features of the bill meet these international expectations and this supports our participation in international trade now and into the future.The intent of the bill is threefold. This is set out in the purpose clause of the bill: firstly consistency in making organic claims requiring businesses who make organic claims to meet consistent organic standards and be approved by the relevant ministry. In that regard I would record a question from Barbara Kuriger and Mark Cameron about the need to have exemptions for small operators who are effectively selling into farmers markets and things. I am assured by the ministry that they intend that there be class exemptions available so that we are not over-regulating that space. But secondly the bill supports organic businesses by making it clearer what they have to do to be able to make organic claims. These requirements will be set through secondary legislation. As I said during the committee stage we're actually very good at this in New Zealand. It is probably one of the best areas that we perform—in a regulatory sense—relative to other parts of the world because we've had to for the reasons that I explained during that debate. There are lots of steps in that process to make sure that the regulations are fit for purpose because they are complex and you can get them wrong if you're not careful. So those safeguards are set out in the legislation. Then finally as I've already said this provides a strong foundation for our participation in the international trade of organic products. To put that into some financial scale I'm advised that—I think it was 2022 it may be a year or two earlier—the organics industry estimated that their export values were $723 million each year. That will increase in part through this but it was increasing anyway. This will help it grow even more. So you can see it's closing in on a billion dollars of exports. So it's an important part of our export economy and therefore supports the standard of living that we need in this country by selling products to the rest of the world in order to pay for the things that we don't produce like cars and computers that we import from overseas. The flexibility of the enabling regime will ensure that incumbent products or sector-specific organisation regulation is workable robust and enduring. I commend the bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."