Shearer David: Food Bill — First Reading 
Shearer David: Food Bill — First Reading 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to take a call on the Food Bill. As has been said by others this bill has support throughout the House simply because it is good common sense legislation. There is a myriad of regulations and by-laws both at the local level and at the national level that regulate the sale and distribution of food. The key thing as other speakers have pointed out is that when we can attribute an estimated cost of about $80 million to lost work opportunities as a result of bad food-handling this legislation is all the more important. 
One of my colleagues pointed out that if people get a sickness such as diarrhoea as a result of poor food-handling and they have to stay home from work there will now probably be an obligation to go to a doctor to get a medical certificate. Let us touch on that matter for a moment. Let us face it: it is a waste of time for people who are sick for a day to have to get an appointment to see a doctor perhaps the next day and to front up with a medical certificate to their employer. Instead of 1 day off work they might need 2 or 3 while they go and get their medical certificate which is apparently much needed! So I congratulate the Government for coming up with a suggestion that will result in more people being off work rather than fewer. 
I come back to the key issue which is the need for the Food Bill. A myriad of by-laws and regulations exist at the moment which makes it extremely complicated and confusing for food sellers and operators. As has been pointed out this bill is not meant to apply to charity barbecues or sausage sizzles although I guess over time particularly as a result of this bill and the additional education related to its implementation we will hopefully see some improvement in that area. 
This bill was begun as has been pointed out by the previous Labour Government as a result of need and the way the existing legislation had grown holus-bolus. We will support the bill to go to select committee. There is an enormous amount of work to be done on this tome this door stop. We will be going through those issues in the select committee. 
I will highlight right now a couple of areas of possible concern. One is the amalgamation of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. This is important because I think that this Government is putting together agencies under the guise of efficiency and cost savings. I believe this will undermine their operations particularly those of the Food Safety Authority when it is under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. With this amalgamation we are seeing no real cost savings whatsoever. There are zero cost savings yet a smaller organisation is amalgamating with a much larger organisation. Its key purpose and its key reason for being are possibly being threatened and undermined. That is an extremely important aspect of this move. 
This move is also found in the science and innovation area; I applaud the Government for its change of name. Its amalgamation of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology in a new very good-sounding ministry—the Ministry of Science and Innovation—again does not really highlight enough what may happen as a result of this amalgamation. Let us see what might happen. We are looking at about $6.9 million to put these two agencies together. It will take at least 5 or 6 years looking at Treasury’s estimates before that becomes cost neutral in terms of the savings. We ask ourselves why we are doing this and the only answer I can come up with is that it makes the Government look like it is doing something for the sake of doing something. It is a great name but $6.9 million is a very big price tag to change the name of an organisation. 
More important it mixes the funding with the policy. Now policy and funding will be in the same agency. The great point about the Ministry of Research Science and Technology—and Labour itself looked at this—was that it was able to give independent policy advice to the Minister separate from its ability to fund different pieces of research. This change makes the Minister susceptible to the fact that funding will be mixed up with that policy advice. Funding could actually be directed by the Minister. That is not the intent of the legislation at all. 
Turning to another point the search for a new head of the Ministry of Science and Innovation was a great opportunity to get some of the best thinkers and innovators internationally to head this new organisation. This organisation can lead our innovation and can lead our economic drivers into the future. We have seen a 2½-week recruitment process to try to find a head for this new organisation—2½ weeks. That does not enable a comprehensive international search to occur. We want this new agency to drive our economic growth to get behind some of the science and innovation and to get behind some of the commercialisation of the fantastic ideas that are out there in New Zealand. What we are seeing is a very half-hearted “wink wink nudge nudge” recruitment policy to get the person who is going to be responsible for driving it. We could get somebody from Finland Denmark Singapore or Israel—the countries in the world that are really out there—at the head of our innovation. Instead we will be getting after 2½ weeks’ search a person who will probably come from within the bureaucracy but who I hope has great credentials. More likely it will be someone with the same thinking and very little new thinking and will therefore provide very little in the way of new opportunities for New Zealand to get ahead. 
I believe that is a very sad indictment on the way that this Government is going about its reorganisation. It is a very sad indictment on the way that we are trying to get ahead in our economic growth. We had an opportunity to recruit a really world-class leader to head up our export scientific and innovation-led industries. Instead we will get somebody from within the bureaucracy who will get a wink a nudge and a tap on the shoulder. That is a wasted opportunity. 
If we did a proper recruitment process if a local person was recruited on the basis of a wide international search and if a New Zealander who was already working within our institutions was selected from an international search I would say that would be a great pat on the back for that person. But we are not getting that. Instead after a 2½-week desultory narrow recruitment process we will be getting somebody who will not necessarily be the best. We will not know whether that person is the best. It is a bit of a shame.