O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Madam Chair Williams. I am reluctant to rise given the enthusiasm to speak on this bill in the committee tonight. But I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the Opposition who were in Government when this unfortunate incident with the WPC80 the false botulism incident occurred. That as has been pointed out has cost this country literally hundreds of millions of dollars and it's a wake-up call to our whole country.I acknowledge the progress made by the previous Government to work through that inquiry to look at the recommendations and then to move through to implement them through this piece of legislation. I acknowledge David Bennett who was the previous Minister who introduced the bill into the House. I'd welcome a contribution from him I guess to give some of the background that he heard in developing this legislation.Can I just say that I would like to welcome support for the bill across the House. I know that the previous Green member of Parliament Steffan Browning had Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 355 that he had brought at the last minute to this piece of legislation and we've had discussions with the Green Party to work through issues that are legitimate issues. They were in the SOP—and I'm not sure whether the Greens will still proceed—issues around labelling the labelling of GM food and irradiated food in this country.The request was a perfectly reasonable one: that we should more thoroughly investigate where inappropriate labelling has been occurring. I've committed to the Green Party that we will follow up on that as a matter of course—in fact there's a legal obligation to do that but of course many of the Government departments were squeezed under the previous Government. We don't have all the money to fix everything immediately and so they had to prioritise investigations. We will look at the level of inappropriate labelling that has been occurring and follow up on that.Can I just also acknowledge concern—and I think there was an amendment from New Zealand First—around the issue of costs for small innovative food producers in the food system. Can I put on the record that as an incoming Government that is looking to grow value in the regional and rural economy we will look to ensure that the regime laid down by the Food Act and by any amendments that we may bring in will indeed offer them opportunity and encouragement to get out and do their thing and not be unduly hindered by huge costs.I know the Primary Production Committee heard from Biddy. Anyone who hasn't heard from Biddy who's a cheesemaker from the Wairarapa should go and look. I think the Ministry for Primary Industries has a file about this high on Biddy. She was a staunch advocate for small artisan cheese producers and I acknowledge the effort she put in to bring that wisdom to Parliament through the select committee. So we've committed to follow up with New Zealand First to ensure that we put in place a regime that is affordable and effective for them.There was at the last minute SOP 316 from the then Government itself when the bill was introduced. It's been tabled. We will follow through with that. It does three things basically. The first one is provide the ability for the director-general to delegate to other senior officials some decision-making powers. The terrible reality was that he was offshore when the WPC80 incident occurred and there were some legal restrictions on what anyone could say at that time. So the Government's proposed that—the previous Government did—and we'll follow through on that.The other one is and it might be of great interest to the members on this side of the Chamber making the sale of hemp seed legal. It's a very low-THC food so for the members on this side of the Chamber who are thinking they might you know see an opportunity here for a bit of fun you'll have to probably eat tonnes of hemp seed before you get a bit of a buzz. But the point is that New Zealand and Australia jointly agreed that the sale of hemp seed was a very low risk and that it was a perfectly legitimate new food for people who want to eat it but because it has very small amounts of THC we couldn't do it under current legislation. So we're making changes there.The other changes are technical. Very briefly they're technical changes that officials have advised the previous Government and this Government need to be carried through. This is a very important piece of legislation and I welcome support from across the Chamber for its progress.