Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's an absolute pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First as we bring this Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill home in its third reading and what a long time this gestation period has been.I would like to acknowledge some of the early proponents of this bill—Steffan Browning and Sue Kedgley and of course Gareth Hughes who has done such a fine job shepherding it through this 52nd Parliament. Of course New Zealand First have also been long-time proponents of this bill and I think Richard Prosser spoke fairly decisively in favour of the bill at the first reading. It has been a longstanding position of New Zealand First. Of course there's no point in being New Zealand First if you're not totally in favour of New Zealand products so it's totally in our space. We like to see New Zealand products showcased to the absolute premium and maximum of their potential and this is what this bill will allow consumers to know; New Zealand products are able to be showcased and consumers will know that they are getting the very best produce in the world.It's not only the quality of the food; it's the provenance of the food. And of course there are big drives on at the moment to lift our environmental standards and certainly our animal welfare standards. And of course we have the highest of food safety standards. I think those are the things that consumers actually really do want to know and consumers in 55 other countries know this already. We normally pride ourselves on leading the world in this sort of thing so it is a pity that it's taken as long to come through as it has. I am pleased that the National Party are supporting this but it has been like pulling teeth over time. So we finally got them on board and are getting unanimous support for this bill. Of course as has been traversed we did have to make some changes in terms of how we brought this bill forward. We've had to create a consumer information standard under section 27 of the Fair Trading Act 1986 and it covers produce that is grown caught or raised in whatever country that it is—it will have to be recorded in terms of single-component foods at point of sale. As supportive as we were as a caucus the clear direction I got from the senior members of the caucus who had been through several iterations of this bill was to keep it as simple as possible in the first instance because it does—and as we discovered through the select committee process—get very complicated very quickly. So this has very much got to be seen as foundation legislation. It's the framework which we can build upon and I think we will probably build upon it quite quickly. I think the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs who will have the power of regulation to expand the bill as he sees fit will do so in time because the traceability is just getting so much more advanced. Technologies like blockchain—just massive amounts of information are able to be condensed down and processed incredibly quickly. So I think this is getting easier all the time to do this traceability. As we've seen through the consumer studies actually I think 78 percent of New Zealand consumers wanted this legislation coming through. There are also some teeth in this. There's a $10000 fine for an individual or $50000 for a company that transgresses this particular Act so that's good. We need to have some back-up. I would like to showcase the cured pork carve-out because that was one—and I'd also like to acknowledge the chairman of New Zealand Pork Eric Roy who's here tonight and Francis Parker who's been actually a stand-out advocate. I actually would like to say that the pork industry out of all the primary industries in my short time at Parliament that have lobbied us has probably done the best. They represent something like 93 farmers—they're a very small industry in the grand scheme of things but they actually do it really cleverly.Hon Ruth Dyson: They bring home the bacon.MARK PATTERSON: They bring home the bacon—well they certainly have tonight. But I think they are actually an exemplar of how you don't have to have a big budget to engage constructively with Parliament. Of course almost two-thirds of our pork products are imported and 85 percent of those come from countries that don't have animal welfare standards that would meet our own. Whilst we have to be very mindful of the non-tariff barriers and imposing those—and that has been discussed earlier—as an exporting country where we export 90 percent of our food we cannot be placing non-tariff barriers or being seen to so we had to dance around that and make sure that we ticked those boxes very very carefully and we certainly did that. It has been to the detriment of the pork industry the waves of cheap imports but many of them do not have the same compliance regulations as our local products do. So I'm sure all New Zealand consumers will be getting out there and supporting their New Zealand - raised pork. Well perhaps not Mr Hughes but he's probably earned his exemption from purchasing. Also I think 20 percent of beef in the winter is imported from Australia mainly and I think that's something that consumers wouldn't necessarily know. Just going on to Mr McKelvie's statement before about how consumers around the world do have access to this information already and it is a big showcase. I recently over the recess had the privilege of going to Taiwan with a couple of my parliamentary colleagues—Kieran McAnulty and Priyanca Radhakrishnan for those that are interested; it was not a junket we were working hard—and one of the things you do when you go on those trips is you go to the local produce markets to see what New Zealand produce you can find. We went to this particular delicatessen where we found some Zespri kiwifruit. All the product there was beautifully presented—absolutely beautifully presented. We saw some beef steaks from Japan wagyu beef that was selling for the equivalent of $190 for what looked like about a 300-gram steak—just for a single steak. That's what you can do if you really showcase your product if you've got a premium product and you can really position it in the market. I think if we're doing this domestically it's going to help us doing it overseas. I back up the comments I think that were made by Kiritapu Allan earlier that the New Zealand entities that probably showed some resistance to this in the select committee process some of the bigger export lobbyists or lobby groups are actually missing the point totally. It is a real opportunity for us to be really proud of what we export and we shouldn't be at all concerned that that may be imposed on us overseas and in fact it is already of course in 55 other countries. So in conclusion I think it has been actually a really good example of the Parliament working well. I have considered long and hard whether I'm prepared to put this on the Hansard but the Hon David Bennett actually did a pretty fair job of shepherding it through as the chairman of the Primary Production Committee. He's done some pretty woeful other things but on this particular occasion he was pretty competent. It shows when you've got a will to get something through as a committee and as a Parliament that you can make anything happen even some relatively complicated legislation like this. I'd also like to commend the officials. We did get really good support. It was quite a complicated process and again the Parliament is well served by our officials as we were in this case. So without further ado Madam Deputy Speaker I would like on behalf of New Zealand First to once and for all commend this Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill to the House. Thank you.