Kedgley Sue: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this bill. We regard it as a fairly narrowly focused and modest bill but we will support it nevertheless. The bill seems to focus on pyramid-selling schemes. I am not sure whether they are a huge problem in the land—in the scheme of things are they an enormous problem? But the bill focuses on them. I think the bill is perfectly reasonable. It increases penalties and so forth and I say so far so good. 
Mr Anderton said in introducing the bill that the Government will be taking a tough line to deter people from misleading consumers about the money they can make from pyramid schemes and so on and so forth. All I would say is that it is well and good that the Government is to focus on taking tougher action to deter people from misleading consumers about the money to be made from pyramid schemes but what about all the other issues where consumers are being misled many of which I would regard as potentially more significant? This legislation gave us an opportunity to really examine the Fair Trading Act a very significant Act that is woefully weak and lacking in powers in many areas. We had an opportunity to really look at and examine that Act and to strengthen it but what did we do? We just focused on pyramid-selling schemes. In that respect we have missed an opportunity here. 
As a result the bill is more significant for what is not in it than for what is. For example one area in which we might have liked to see a strengthening in the bill concerns the consumer’s right to know. In many jurisdictions overseas consumers have a recognised legal right to know what is in a product they have purchased for example and where it comes from. That would have been a wonderful right to enshrine in a bill that amends the Fair Trading Act. But no we have just focused on pyramid-selling schemes. The basic right to know what is in a product we purchase and where it comes from is extremely important but according to our officials it does not exist in law. Therefore this would have been an opportunity to enshrine that. 
The other point is that when the Minister of Consumer Affairs talked about the bill she said that we need to ensure that consumers have the information they need to make informed choices and we need to protect them from exploitation etc. It is extraordinary that for example if one walks around a supermarket one would find dozens and dozens or perhaps hundreds of examples of goods that are misleadingly or deceptively labelled and that absolutely nothing is done about that. This bill would have been an opportunity to enshrine that consumer right to know and to look at issues such as how to strengthen the provisions in the legislation to protect consumers from misleading and deceptive behaviour. 
Equally extraordinary from my point of view is that the Minister of Consumer Affairs and indeed the entire Government are actively opposing the fundamental right of consumers to know where their food comes from. We have the extraordinary spectacle that our Government will be in Australia on Friday vehemently opposing the right of consumers to know where their food comes from. It is called country of origin labelling. Similarly in the international Codex Alimentarius forum that decides on international standards New Zealand has taken the most vehement stand of any country in the world in opposing the right of consumers to know what country their food comes from. It seems quite extraordinary that on the one hand we are fretting about pyramid-selling schemes and focusing on the protection of the consumer in that particular area and on the other hand we are busily undermining the right of consumers to have even such a fundamental right as to know where their food comes from. 
It does seem to me to be quite bizarre and extraordinary that even the Ministry of Consumer Affairs which is supposed to be all about protecting consumers from misleading and deceptive behaviour opposes our basic right to know where our food comes from—the basic country of origin labelling. So the Government is at international forums—at the Codex Alimentarius Commission—and in Australia arguing that the Australians should get rid of their mandatory country of origin labelling and that consumers have no right to know where their food comes from. Then the Government makes a great big deal about a small amendment to the Fair Trading Act concerning pyramid selling. 
If we are to be concerned about strengthening the bill protecting consumers and the whole issue of deceptive and misleading conduct let us apply that across the board. Let the Government be consistent and not undermine that right in some areas while in other areas suggesting that it is taking some great action to strengthen the legislation. It is extraordinary that if we wander around a supermarket and look at meat for example—and 40000 tonnes of meat is imported into New Zealand—we would not see one single label in any supermarket in the land to indicate where that meat comes from. It comes from places like the People’s Republic of China Australia South Korea America and so forth. Surely in this era of mad cow disease etc. we have a legitimate right to know where our meat comes from. That is simple. 
What about fish? We import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish. We import shrimps from places in South-east Asia where they use antibiotics routinely in fish farming etc. Surely we should have a basic right to know where that food comes from not only because of our concerns about health and safety but also because we may prefer to support and purchase products from New Zealand. I would argue that when the vast majority of New Zealanders go into a supermarket they fondly imagine that they are buying New Zealand meat and they do not realise that is really a bit of a lottery and a lot of the meat comes from overseas countries. They have no idea of that and to me that is misleading and deceptive. 
We are told that this bill will strengthen the whole Fair Trading Act so why did we not focus on issues that are of fundamental concern to the people of New Zealand? This bill is a wasted opportunity. We will support the bill in the narrow little areas that it concentrates on but frankly it is woefully inadequate does not go nearly far enough and is very much a missed opportunity.