Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well it's ironic in this House that the last two bills we've been debating over yesterday and today have seen a massive rush to get bills to very shortened select committees and bad process around not allowing the public to have consultation.Now this bill the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill—we're in a rush to slow it down. I want to acknowledge the current Minister who is in the House and has spoken to the bill because she's a new member and a new Minister of this House. But actually here we are passing legislation which expires on 1 March to extend it for five years. So we're in a hurry to slow it down and so good on the Minister for bringing it now but I'm not so sure why it has got to the point on behalf of the last Government where it became so urgent that it had to be rushed through at this period of time just to get it where it is.It's a very simple piece of legislation. The actual amendment bill itself is shorter than the explanatory note so there's very little to it. It has been through select committee. It's not to make light or underestimate the importance of food safety as the Minister just mentioned but certainly there's very little to this bill.The explanatory note says that it will provide certainty for the industry and the consumers. Yes there will be some certainty there that there's another five years' extension on this to put a regime in place—and the Minister has just said it may not take five years. But look this extension on a bill that's got regulations that are 35 years old—this is 1985 with a five-year extension. It's very questionable to say that COVID—we've only had COVID for a year and yes COVID has got in the way of some things but it's very hard to believe that a Government that was in play for three years and had COVID for the last year of that Government has actually had to extend this.So really with this bill there is nothing to see here. Even the select committee really—they went through the bill. I wasn't on the select committee at the time but they recommended that there be no adjustments to do to this bill from their perspective. It only has two provisions and each provision amends dates contained within the Food Act which refer to the expiry of the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. So now we have between now and 1 March 2026 to get these regulations in place.So yes it will provide certainty for the industry but only certainty that the time frame has now been put out to 40 years. If I think back 40 years—and it's easy for someone like me to do that—the range of dietary supplements that have been on the market and developed over that time has become quite huge. I think it's a bill that should have been acted on way before now but with no regulations for the dietary supplements they will be regulated by general laws that apply to food and as the Minister just explained there is some risk around this.What we've been told is that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) supports a five-year extension as the preferred policy option. Now this is an interesting observation in that everything else is being done in such a hurry. It looks like MPI wants to really allow themselves a lot of time to go through this and to go through this thoroughly. I would encourage that this happens a lot more quickly than what is being proposed with this piece of legislation.So I'm not sure that the time frames on this are ambitious. In fact I'm sure that the time frames on this are definitely not ambitious. I get that MPI want to do it properly. I understand that but we do have some laws in place now that can be a basis for that. What I do hope is that when these regulations are put in place that they're not over-regulatory red tape and that they are simple that they are easy to follow and that the industry can pick them up and function with them quite quickly because the industry actually—a quote from the select committee: The regulations are shockingly out-of-date but we have no choice but to very reluctantly support the Bill in order to ensure that … at least [there's] some kind of regulation in place for natural health products. At best it is a case of 'something … better than nothing—but only just.' Our industry has been calling for a modern regulatory [system] regime over the past 20 years an issue that is becoming increasingly urgent given the chilling effect the situation is having on [the] export market".I would go further as to say here that one of the submitters said they've seen examples of local businesses—and this is a quote—"receiving export offers for innovative new products that use unique local ingredients only to discover they cannot export the products because New Zealand's standards don't comply with regulations in comparable jurisdictions such as Australia the US or Dubai." So there we are actually losing valuable export market because we're allowing up to another five years for these regulations to be put in place when they could have been worked on.So if we're going to use COVID-19 as an excuse and a reason why this hasn't been done maybe we should ask the Government to use COVID-19 as a reason to hurry this up because what we're looking for as a country in our new order of the world where we've lost tourism and we've had to change the way we do things in a number of areas—we're looking for new technology and new products that we can take to the world. We've been very lucky as a country that the majority of our exports have been trading well in a world that has been pretty upside down and is still pretty upside down and will be for quite some time to come and that our trade and exports have been a large part of what's kept us afloat and have been keeping the economy going. I have to say across all agriculture and horticultural products things have largely gone quite well. I have to mention the exception of wool which needs a great boost.So the submitter said "It's absolutely heart-breaking … given many of our members are small businesses [and they] are greatly affected by lost opportunities such as these." So I would encourage this Minister who has actually come in and made a move on this bill—thank you—to get this moving particularly for the people who want to export but also the people who want to sell in the local market to please encourage MPI to look at going a bit faster. You've expressed the need or the thoughts around that that you probably want to do that and I think it's really imperative that we do that not only for the food safety issue but because we have some great products here and we need the market the overseas markets and we need the products and we need the trade more than we ever have before. So thank you Madam Speaker and what I would like to say also is that National is supporting this bill. Thank you."