O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast—Tasman): Most of the country probably will underestimate the importance of this piece of legislation. We are a country that is still entirely dependent for our economy on the production of food. It used to be considered that we produce wool and meat and milk but as was widely accepted at the Fieldays and in a number of forums New Zealand is in the business of producing food. It must be the finest food for the world's most discerning customers in my view because it will always cost them a bit more to buy quality food from New Zealand. So we have got to produce food that is indeed up to expectations. We have through history had a very proud record of food safety but I am sad to say—through the new pressures of market forces opportunism and commercial pressures and through a Government that when it came in of course cut taxes tried to squeeze government and in some areas undermined the expertise the professionalism and the capability of New Zealand officials. One area was food safety and without going back to identify all of the issues that we have had—of course the whey protein concentrate inquiry was one that exposed a number of major problems. Fonterra our largest single company and one that is still owned for the most part by New Zealanders—a company we should be very proud of—made a mistake. Indeed no matter how big or small you are mistakes will occur. But it relied on Government agencies to firstly test and then verify some of the samples that went through from a problem they had identified. That is where it all went wrong and because the Government had not invested in the proper areas of regulation and testing—in fact we got caught out big time.When we talk of costs I do not think we have been able to assess the true cost of this to New Zealand. It is in the hundreds of millions of dollars because for too long—and it was not a period of months but for a number of days and weeks—people thought that we were producing food that could be contaminated with botulism. That is indeed a serious threat I guess to our food safety reputation. Thankfully that was not the case but what we did is we failed in a number of areas—particularly the Government agencies failed in a number areas when they should have been able to reassure Fonterra when a mistake had occurred of that while it had to rectify that it had indeed not done anything that would have put New Zealand's reputation at risk. AsureQuality and AgResearch in my view failed because the National Government had not maintained their capability or brought them up to the speed that is necessary to uphold our international reputation. So what we have now is a piece of legislation that we hope will improve the regime make it more robust and prevent any mistakes like this happening in the future.The reality is that if the Government continues to underfund these important areas—it claims we have growth in the economy it claims we have growth in exports and it claims we have growth in imports and net value to New Zealand but what is not always occurring is an increase in the level of investment required to run proper verification and testing regimes. There is some additional money going to AgResearch and AsureQuality but it is not at the same proportion as the growth in our economic activity. I put to the Government because Labour supports this legislation the qualification that there has to be proper investment in these areas of oversight. The naive belief that the National Government has always had is that well the market will sort this out. If we have got rogue players or people who have a lesser standard then you know they will not last long. We as a country and the agribusiness sector are driven by the lowest common denominator. Our reputation is based on the poorest performance of any exporter from our country not that of the highest performer.So we need systems in place. We need regulations that ensure that the poorest performer exceeds the expectations of the customers in the market place. That is around food safety absolutely and it is around food quality. So we hope that the passage of this legislation in supporting it through will indeed support that reality I guess as we move into the future.There are a few requirements. The Minister for Primary Industries has referred to some of them—new requirements for risk-based plans and programmes. The Primary Production Committee has thoroughly canvassed all of these issues and I think made some adjustments that in general we think will improve it. Acknowledging the chair of the Primary Production Committee over there Mr Ian McKelvie—I think he managed a very good process and I think we have done well. However one of the things that did occur was that in all of this kind of upgrading of regulation we are at risk of I guess killing the golden goose—strangling innovation in New Zealand in some small areas of food production where we are seeing true innovation and growth. I refer to a submitter who has come to the select committee on at least two occasions I think on food safety issues Biddy Fraser-Davies a small cheese producer who is doing some innovative things who wants to continue and who is providing inspiration for other small artisan cheesemakers. Her concern is that we do not put in place regulations and requirements and food plans that simply stifle her out of existence.Trying to find that balance was something that the select committee I think endeavoured to do and I think we got the balance about right although I will put on notice that Labour in Government will undertake a programme to ensure a food safety regime that is practical and affordable to small artisan and innovative food producers in this country. We need that. While this is about tidying up the regime for Fonterra we cannot expect the smallest player—keeping in mind that their standards must not be lowered at all but the way that they meet those standards and the verification of that simply cannot be unaffordable which is the reality that many of these people are facing at the moment.Stronger verification stronger enforcement traceability and recall regulations—I think everyone in the food sector Fonterra in particular have upped their game in this area. Fonterra now talks of the ability to actually through DNA analysis trace milk right back to a particular farm. I think that is what the market is now expecting. We have got in the marketplace—in spite of attempts to deny this reality—the ability now in marketing single farm - sourced milk for consumers. I think that when we roll that out around the world we will be stepping up and getting more value for our produce.Can I just say that Labour does welcome this legislation in through the House. It has been a long time in coming but you know good things take time. I trust the select committee has got the balance right—that is around regulations certification and requirements but again always leaving the door open for innovative New Zealand food producers to get out there to test the local market and maybe to investigate the possibility of getting into the export market.New Zealand depends upon primary production. We are food producers to the world—not to the whole world but to about 40 million or 50 million people. We need our reputation to be upheld. The passage of this legislation off the back of the lessons learnt by Fonterra's unfortunate incident with WPC80 and the mistakes made by two key Government agencies—we are moving to improve that. I think we can assure the world that these mistakes should not occur again as long as the Government properly resources the agencies that must always keep proper oversight on food production in this country.