Hughes GarethCONSUMERS' RIGHT TO KNOW (COUNTRY OF ORIGIN OF FOOD) BILLThird ReadingGARETH HUGHES (Green): I move That the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill be now read a third time. Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. So I've been a vegetarian my entire adult life and this year I found myself in the odd situation of going through supermarket chillers rifling through packs of bacon looking at the labels. Looking at all of those labels what I've discovered is it's impossible.Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh come back to our side. Come back to the good side.GARETH HUGHES: It's impossible. I'm a committed vegetarian. No amount of bacon cooking will persuade me. But anyway what I want for those people who do eat bacon is that when they look at the labels they can work out where that bacon comes from because the fact is when you look at bacon or pork or a whole bunch of other products in New Zealand it says Made from local and imported ingredients." Given that 85 percent of New Zealand bacon is imported 95 percent of that is from countries with terrible much worse animal welfare standards our consumers are none the wiser. And it's not just a problem with bacon; it's a problem with all of our foods. It's a problem with our food labelling laws and that's what we're here to fix tonight. Now people care about where their food comes from for a variety of reasons. Maybe it's labour conditions; maybe it's for ethical reasons; maybe it's to avoid antibiotics pesticides or genetic engineering. No matter the reason I believe consumers have the right to know where their food comes from. They don't even need a reason. Maybe they just want to know where their food comes from. The problem is you can't exercise your consumer power if you don't have the information provided. So 55 other countries around the world already have country-of-origin food labelling including the US the UK and Canada. Australia has a comprehensive regime that even indicates the percentage of Australian-grown products within the food. Now I would have preferred New Zealand to be the first country to introduce this but we will be hopefully after tonight the 56th. We've required country-of-origin labelling on footwear and clothing since 1992 but not for food. Opinion polls have shown Kiwi consumers overwhelmingly want to know where their food comes from. Now the Green Party's long been a champion for country-of-origin food labelling and we have many of those champions in the House tonight. I want to acknowledge the longstanding advocacy of former Green MP Sue Kedgley and former Green MP Steffan Browning. These are two tireless champions for food safety for food quality for organics for regenerative agriculture and for animal welfare. It's taken 16 years multiple MPs two select committee hearings a select committee inquiry a massive petition of 36000 people led by Sue Kedgley but I guess you could say sometimes good things take time. I think you could also say Green Party members are sometimes out in front and we're ahead of the times. A lot of other groups have worked to get to this point and I'd like to really single out Consumer New Zealand Horticulture New Zealand New Zealand Pork and many others. The bill passed its first reading—it was shepherded by Steffan Browning—and it went to the Primary Production Committee. It then went through two tranches of submissions and I'd like to thank everyone. There were hundreds and hundreds of people and multiple groups who made a submission. I want to thank them. I want to thank the members of the select committee including the chair David Bennett for their constructive engagement. Going through the submission and consideration process it was clear some amendment to the legislation was needed to make the bill more workable and to achieve cross-party support. For example rather than the original stand-alone Act how it was drafted it was amended so that food labelling could be achieved through the existing Fair Trading Act. This was to avoid the confusion of having multiple regimes and requirements spread across different Acts but it also is quite useful in the sense that it gives an existing regime to include or exclude a penalties regime and a regulation-making regime. Now in the select committee we heard some legal red herrings raised by some large corporate submitters. They would say that the risk was that country-of-food origin labelling would somehow breach our international obligations disregarding the fact that many of our international trading partners have this. Now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade came to the select committee and advised that it is possible to draft and propose the regime in such a way that it's consistent with our international obligations. At this point can I thank the officials who advised the committee. Now personally I think the trade concerns were less about the legality and more about a campaign from some food producers to try and persuade other countries to weaken their labelling laws. Can I respectfully suggest to Fonterra Federated Farmers and Beef and Lamb a more profitable food future for New Zealand producers is embracing our New Zealandness highlighting our national food story because we've got a fantastic story rather than hoping to weaken other countries' labelling regimes to export bland commodities. Now the biggest question the committee faced was whether it would bring home the bacon and include bacon in the legislation after being disregarded. Given as I said 85 percent of our pork products come from overseas 95 percent of that with terrible animal welfare standards it's been odd for me as a vegetarian to be advocating for New Zealand Pork. It probably killed my vegetarian street-cred that New Zealand Pork put a press release out saying they thanked me for my advocacy. But I genuinely believe that if Kiwi consumers want to avoid poor animal welfare standards—Hon Stuart Nash: Just try it man. Just try it. It's fantastic.GARETH HUGHES: —they should be able to have the information—ha ha! I'm sure it's fantastic. I know it's fantastic. It's not the taste. I'm not eating it. I'm grateful that the committee did listen to the advocacy of groups such as New Zealand Pork and the overwhelming majority of submitters and bacon was included. I thank the National Party in particular for that inclusion. The original bill covered all single-component foods and was amended by the Primary Production Committee to only include "single-ingredient minimally processed foods". The rationale for this was the committee wanted a scheme that was simple to implement with the least cost and to avoid confusion around definition. That's why they proposed it be for fresh frozen unprocessed minimally processed—for example minced cut or filleted. In some respects the bill was improved. But I believe by limiting the scope of foods covered it might disappoint some Kiwi consumers and confuse them about why some products are in and others aren't. For example it means that dried cured and pickled foods are out; nuts grains and seeds are not explicitly in at this point. I think people out shopping will be wondering why tomatoes are in but canned tomatoes are out; fruits are in but nuts are out; a cucumber's in but a pickle's out. The line had to be drawn somewhere and the committee drew it there but I hope over time the list of foods can be expanded so we can get closer to the Australian comprehensive regime. But still this bill acts as a great first step a flexible first step and a foundation for which further foods can be added through regulations in the Fair Trading Act. The ball's now in the court of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and he'll start the process of consulting on the regulations under section 27 of the Fair Trading Act to set an information disclosure standard for country of origin of food. I hope this can happen as soon as practicable and the legislation directs that it has to happen within 18 months. I hope he can take an expansive as possible approach to which foods require labelling. I'd like to also now take the opportunity to thank the Ministers Faafoi and O'Connor for their very positive approach and engagement throughout this process. Now the question for the country is what's next for food labelling? I hope we can take this as a first step and maybe start to have the conversation about palm oil whether that should be labelled—whether we should be modernising the dietary labelling information on labels. For fizzy drinks why on earth don't we have the number of teaspoons of sugar which are in a bottle of fizzy drink? But that's for the future and tonight this is about celebrating the passing of this legislation with the vast majority of support of Parliament—fingers crossed. Thank you very much to everyone who's made this possible: Labour New Zealand First and National. Passing this bill is a very positive first step and it does give consumers more information power. It aligns us with other countries. The cost is likely to be absolutely miniscule for consumers given that labels are changed all the time. It's a great foundation for the Government to build on and adding foods through the Fair Trading Act regulations means many more can be included. I want to make sure that when those Kiwi consumers—if they're in the bacon chiller at the supermarket or anywhere looking at a label—want to know where the food comes from they'll be able to get that information. I want to make sure that Kiwis have consumer power. We've got some of the best food in the world and such a great national story. We should be sharing it. Why on earth would we want to hide that away? Thank you very much to the parties for their support. Kia ora koutou."