Mathers Mojo: Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9906. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): It is my pleasure to take a call on this Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill. We will be supporting it. The heart of this bill is about maintaining the integrity of New Zealand wine and protecting the hard-won reputations of wine from the good wine-growing regions from being undermined by inferior products usurping their names.It is part of a wider thing really of appreciation by many consumers for products from a single origin—for example single-origin chocolate and single-origin coffee are an incredibly different taste experience from the mass-produced commodities. And it is similarly the case with wine. You can have a very different consumer experience and appreciation when you learn to sample wines from different geographical areas. The geographical indications are a way of telling a story about that product: about the region that it comes from about the soil that it has been grown in about the weather that produces that particular flavour of wine—and it is also why the vintage of wine and taste will change from year to year because the weather changes from year to year—and about all of the other people who grow the wine. All of that is captured in geographical indications as a way of furthering the relationships between the consumers and the product. That is something that the Green Party is right behind. It is about building a relationship between consumers and products and the people who produce those products and the area where those products comes from. It is important to really build that awareness.Geographical indication is just one way of helping to build that awareness amongst consumers for the product and alongside that people often want to know about the history of the region. I remember being quite fascinated with single-origin chocolate—discovering where the cocoa beans had been grown and who grew them and how they were transported here to New Zealand to be made into single-origin chocolate. That has opened my eyes to a whole other way of relating to the products that we consume.I think it is exactly the same for tourists who come to New Zealand and tour the wineries. They can then develop an appreciation of where the wine that they are drinking has come from why it might taste and have the flavours that it does and why it will be distinctive to that area and all of this is building individuality and uniqueness as part of bringing value-added products to the primary production sector. That is something that we really want to be maintaining not trying to compete in a sort of mass-produced anonymous commodities market where it does not matter where the product has come from it is all been blended to be standardised and all the uniqueness and variation has been taken out. That is not the way that we should be building our economy.Our economy should be built on diversification and on relationships between the consumers and the product that they are consuming and purchasing and an understanding and appreciation of where it comes from. With that understanding and appreciation of the uniqueness of the product that they are consuming there is very often a willingness to pay a premium for that product because consumers have built that relationship and that is something that we need to be maximising. That is what this bill is doing and that is why we absolutely support it.There is one important amendment that is included in this bill that I think is incredibly important. It now stipulates that the 15 percent of the wine that does not come from the geographical area still has to come from New Zealand. I think that is an incredibly important amendment. It would be extremely bizarre to go through all this effort to create a unique geographical indication and brand for an area and then dilute that with imported wine. So it is absolutely wonderful that this has been included in this bill. With that it is a pleasure to support the bill. Thank you.