Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Let me just start with the wonderful news that we've just had from Korea which is that Nico Porteous the New Zealand skier has earned the country a bronze medal.Hon Andrew Little: Second one for the day.GARETH HUGHES: I understand the second of the day Mr Little. Look I think that's absolutely wonderful. I wish all our athletes over there the best of luck for the remaining days of the competition.I think I'm going to enter the segue" event—maybe a future Commonwealth or Olympic Games—because if you look at New Zealand's agricultural sector we get the gold medal for sheep meat exports and the gold medal also for dairy exports; we get a silver for wool exports and a silver for softwood log exports. Look we are 12th in the world for the value of our agricultural exports the food and primary products we send around the world. Look it's a tremendously big part of our economy and when you think that we're 12th by value it's actually the value that this country needs to focus on. It's the value that is going to grow the prosperity going to grow the jobs but also going to protect the environment which is at the heart of our economy. Now while we're talking about value on the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) website they talk about the need for being a trusted brand. That trust is built on strong animal welfare standards which I regret to say is prominently in the media today. We need to make sure we have strong animal welfare standards so our international consumers can trust our products. We also need to make sure we've got the strong food safety standards and that's why the 2013 whey milk contamination botulism scare was so important to New Zealand's food exports. That scare damaged the confidence of international consumers and while the report found that there was no actual contamination no sickness as a result the inquiry did find a number of recommendations. That's why the Green Party is voting for this legislation tonight because the recommendations here are all about protecting our food safety standards so our consumers both domestically and internationally can have confidence in New Zealand food products. This is how we trade. This is how we're going to go up those rankings from 12th—hopefully with the gold medal for market value one day.I acknowledge this legislation has the unanimous support of the Parliament. That's important going forward so consumers here and around the world can have confidence. Basically at the heart of the legislation is a risk regime that is based on the risk profile. It's all about ensuring traceability and recall requirements are met. For us an important concern we had going in—and one I'd acknowledge was adequately canvassed in the Primary Production Committee report which has been presented to the House mostly from the work of Steffan Browning a departed member who I'd like to acknowledge—was the need for a balance because when you're using a risk approach for your food safety regime there's obviously a huge scale difference between your big producers your Fonterras your Mainlands versus your maybe boutique home producer of cheeses or olive oil.Now what we heard in the select committee submissions was that for some of these smaller food producers 40 percent of their revenue actually is taken up in compliance costs. Now what no one I believe in this House wants to see is compliance costs—literally seeing businesses go under or not being able to innovate or provide these boutique value-added products which are so important to growing the value of our agricultural exports. So I think the balance has been struck quite right. I know a lot of work was done by the committee and I acknowledge all the members present in the House who participated on that—the need to get that balance right to make sure that we can ensure food safety standards but at the same time not have an onerous or burdensome compliance cost regime.A second area that we've been pushing for for quite a long time is the low-THC hemp seeds and making sure—I guess you could call it a bit of a regulatory quirk or something which had to be addressed—it is being addressed in this legislation. Now I don't want to out myself as a flamin' hippie who loves eating organic hemp bliss balls but look it's a product that a lot of consumers like to eat. There is no psychoactive effect from the low-THC hemp. There are quite a lot of documented health impacts and look it's been eaten for literally thousands of years and the medicinal health impacts are quite widespread. In fact one of the first ever medical documents from history ever discovered talked about the medical impacts of this. So it's good that we're finally getting some clarification here. It's pretty important for New Zealand food producers. They can have the certainty to be providing this ingredient if that's what their consumers want.When you look at the select committee report as issued to the House another issue canvassed was the risks of GE food and irradiated foods not having the legal statutory requirements for labelling to be investigated. Now I'd really like to acknowledge the work of the Hon Damien O'Connor in this space because it is on our law books—for more than a dozen years—that organic and irradiated foods have to have labelling requirements on New Zealand food products—very good.The problem however is that no one had actually been investigating or doing the checking in our food stores whether in fact they were being complied with. Now if you want to try and avoid all genetically engineered foods it's critically important that you can have trust in the labels to know what you're eating so you can effect your consumer choice. Now I'm very proud to say that we've been working with the Minister for Food Safety and MPI will be conducting a review a stocktake of the labelling regime in New Zealand so that consumers can have confidence that when a product says it doesn't contain genetically engineered or irradiated foods they know with certainty that it won't. It's a very good step and I'd like to acknowledge the Minister.We also saw in the select committee report considering this legislation the issue of country-of-origin labelling because while it was ruled out of scope by the select committee it's something 55 other countries around the world have—mostly developed countries; I'm talking about the UK Canada the US and Australia. It's something we require in New Zealand for footwear we import into New Zealand to know which country the footwear's come from. It's something we apply to wine in New Zealand and most other countries do too—you know which country the wine's coming from—but when it comes to the vast bulk of our food we don't have the same rights as Australians or Americans or Brits because we don't know which country our food comes from. So while it was ruled out of scope of the legislation I would point out that almost half of the total submissions were calling for this. So while we're looking at our food safety regime having consumers have the adequate information—I'd put it to the House the right to information—should be protected and that's why I'm also proud to say that Parliament will have the opportunity to work on this with my Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill initially introduced by Steffan Browning which is currently in the Primary Production Committee so consumers can have that right.So we've talked about some of the areas the Green Party was really focused on in improving the legislation: protecting small consumers to make sure the balance between food safety and an onerous regulatory regime wasn't putting them out of business or reducing—or was unbalanced for those compliance costs—the GE labelling issue the country-of-origin food labelling issue and those low-THC hemp seeds. So I'd like to acknowledge all parties in this House for supporting the legislation and thank those committee members who worked on it. Look it's a good step forward and this is how we're going to grow those agricultural exports not just the low-volume commodity exports—you know the brown paper bags of coal-fired dehydrated milk products we send around the world—it's talking about real value because there's a limit to how many cows we can cram in our paddocks if we just focus on increasing the volume. Just like in the tourism industry: there's a limit to how many tourists we can cram down in Fiordland. There's no limit to the export of value-added smart innovative products and this is where our future a richer New Zealand is going to come from not just increasing volume and cramming things in and reducing the quality; it's going to come from value.That's why I think in the food space we can look to our wine export industry as a real exemplar. In fact per litre of wine—of grapes sorry; the source ingredients for wine—we are top of the world for the value of it. Now we see tens of thousands of tons offered from low-cost producers like Chile even Australia because of low labour costs and I put it potentially low labour standards. We're on the other side of the market actually focusing on a higher-quality higher-value product. That means the wine we export around the world commands some of the highest costs. That's exactly where we want to be positioned in the global wine market accessing the value and this is why this legislation's so important to make sure the food standards are giving our consumers the trust and confidence in New Zealand agricultural products.So look I'm very happy to be supporting this legislation. I'd like to thank the House. Kia ora koutou Madam Deputy Speaker."