Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I just wanted to echo the last words of the last speaker Gareth Hughes that on Suffrage Day in New Zealand we have the proud history as a country of being the first to enable women to vote. But it was quite bizarre when you actually hear that it took 40 years before a woman got to Parliament and then only 10 percent of our parliamentarians have ever been women. So although we have near 40 percent now we still have a lot of room to catch up on. So I'd like to congratulate those women in this House especially the Deputy Speaker as well. As a woman leader who was in that first 100 women that had been in Parliament you can be very proud of what you've done as a trailblazer for women in the National Party and also in Parliament and in general. So congratulations to you and to all the other women here tonight.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you but come to the bill.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes. Ha ha! So now we come to the bill.It's unfortunate that there's only one Green Party member here Gareth Hughes. I'd just like to thank Gareth Hughes for the way that he conducted this bill through the Primary Production Committee. I think that it's appropriate that we acknowledge Steffan Browning as well who had been an advocate for this issue for many years. I think the Green Party actually do need to be thanked and congratulated. This is something that they have been consistent on in all the time I've been in Parliament and I think that they've always promoted this issue. It's been a long road but they've actually got there. I think that that is a genuine desire of the Green Party to actually have got this bill through and I think that the Parliament itself has moved over that time to accommodate that. So a big congratulations to Gareth Hughes and your team and I wish you all the best as it progresses through.Gareth Hughes gave a very good explanation of the bill and I just want to touch on a few things that were part of the decision-making process of the select committee. First of all we had three options in front of us in the initial stages. We chose the least onerous option which is the single-ingredient option. You've got further degrees of options. You can look at it through the tomato as a great example of whether it's just the tomato you would get or whether you get it in a can or whether you get it more processed with other products in a can. So there are a whole lot of options and it becomes more and more difficult as you go through those options to actually identify the country of origin. Although the Greens are quite correct in that this will give an indication the reality is that when you get to those multiple-ingredient foods it's very very difficult to be able to identify the country of origin and it becomes extremely difficult for consumers to be able to rely on that. That may seem something that's not beyond the realms of possibility because as the Greens have said this bill was only on that first option of the most basic situation of a single-ingredient food.But the key thing to understand about this bill—and the part that we didn't know in the select committee until the very end—is that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs who is actually in the House here tonight has the ultimate ability to include any food under this legislation. The advice we got initially was that it would have to go through the definition of the single-ingredient food and that was the constraining definition that all parties agreed on within the select committee. However at the last minute we got advice that in effect the Minister has total ability to put any food into this through regulation.I know the Minister's there and he's laughing but he does have that power. That effectively means that this bill will achieve all the purposes that the Green Party had ever wanted it to achieve because effectively it can cover every food. But it also means that we don't have as robust a process around that as the Green Party or consumers would necessarily expect because it is now only up to the Minister's discretion as to what foods can come in or out. So you could have some foods in the third tier that are quite well processed—have multiple ingredients—which the Minister may determine that they want to include and they could well be included and there's nothing that the consumer would be able to do in that case. That is something that many submitters will be unaware of as well.So when we had submissions from say Fonterra for example—they submitted in favour of the bill as the committee had determined which was the single-ingredient smallest option. That was because dairy is excluded from that single ingredient. Now with the ability under regulation to include any food dairy would be included. So their submission might be quite different with that further advice. Also we had some submissions that were against having a mandatory country of origin. The Meat Industry Association was the main one that sought to have a voluntary programme. They felt that producers and manufacturers could make that definition and decision themselves and determine that if the customers really wanted New Zealand country of origin on that food that would force them effectively into doing it. That voluntary option didn't find favour and isn't how this legislation works. This is mandatory on that very single ingredient. But as I say it will cover any food that the Minister deems should be included in there.Another issue was around the pork industry and the committee came to a conclusion that they were able to include that within the definition. That was partly because we knew the Minister was going to be doing that anyway and to save some time we might as well just get it included now.Hon Nathan Guy: He loves bacon. Ha ha!Hon DAVID BENNETT: He does love his bacon. And to save a Supplementary Order Paper going through this House—there was the potential to get it through—but also it doesn't make any difference because the Minister in effect has that ability to put any food through at any time once they've got that regulation-making power.There were some submitters that were also worried about the costs involved and it was hard to get a really definitive answer around the costs of this. Some manufacturers were keen to engage with the committee and explain what they think their costs were but many weren't. So the committee didn't really have full information around those costs. But you know some expected costs were $15 million for fresh over a 20-year period and $29.8 million for frozen over that period so you're looking at quite substantial amounts but spread over 20 years. There wasn't that much of a push by submitters around that to the committee because there would always be rebranding and other such things going on over that period of time. So the committee didn't have full and frank information you could say about the cost but then at the same time we gave submitters many opportunities to provide that and we didn't receive that information.In a sense this bill is one which I think there is general public support to have a country-of-origin approach. People want to know what's in their food and that's a general perception around I think this Parliament and around in the general public. However don't be under any illusion that this bill will actually mean that the consumer will know everything about what that product is because it is related to those single-ingredient foods and that is easy to do and we've done that. But the Minister has the ability to add in any food under the regulation-making power. When you get into those much more complex - type foods it becomes much more difficult to actually guarantee country of origin and that will be the difficulty that consumers will find and they may feel that that might be an issue.So we recommend this bill to the House. It is a start in this area but I think that there is one recommendation that I would make to the current Minister and future Ministers and that is just to be careful with their power under that regulation making because there is a difficulty there. If we had a full Government bill that had gone through full advice then we maybe could have come to some positions in that area. It's a big power now in the Minister's hands and that should be exercised with care and done in a manner which doesn't detract from the idea of country of origin which consumers can rely on. If it is used too broadly that power then that will detract from that intention which is a very genuine intention and something that most consumers would like to see. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.