McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): A number of firsts are going to occur in the Parliament this afternoon. First of all I want to congratulate the member Steffan Browning on having the luck to draw a bill out of the ballot. But there are three other firsts involved. That is the best speech I have ever heard the member make in this House. The second one is that I did not ever think I would leave here agreeing with Steffan Browning. He is going to leave here before me with a bit of luck—but I am not sure about that either. The next first is that he got through his speech without mentioning Roundup and I think that is pretty amazing so I want to congratulate him on that as well. There is another one which I will get on to shortly.I think it is very interesting that the member has drawn a bill that I think sentimentally many people in New Zealand agree with. He outlined that in the course of his speech a moment or two ago. The National Government is going to support the first reading. There are a number of reasons for us supporting the first reading. I will get on to some of the challenges that we have with that in a little while. First of all I want to talk about a little bit of the background to this. The Primary Production Committee is I guess a pretty collegial select committee. We talk about a lot of issues outside of business hours I suppose for want of a better word although the poor clerk has to listen to us quite often. This is an issue that we often talk about because one or two of the members of this Parliament managed to raise it in respect of almost everything we discuss in that select committee and the previous member is one of those. It is an issue that I think is of interest to New Zealanders. It is of interest to a large number of our commercial grower entities. I think it is something that we will get to as we move through the select committee discussions on this bill.I was rather intrigued with the title—the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. One could compile quite a Committee stage speech on the title I would imagine and no doubt someone will. It is an interesting name and I am sure that may well get simplified in the course of this process. As Mr Browning pointed out the bill sets out the requirements to label the country of origin of single-component foods. The interesting thing about single-component foods is that they can have additives in them but they are additives that are basically concerned with preserving the foods and enabling those foods to be sold in a safe manner. The types of things I am talking about are salt water sugar and a number of other things like that.Making it a single-component food really plays right into the primary productive sector in New Zealand of meat fish fruit vegetables grains nuts flour oils etc.—all things that we grow very well in New Zealand. Many of those items are also imported into New Zealand. The two dominant supermarket chains in New Zealand currently have their own versions of country-of-origin labelling in place. Many other organisations around New Zealand do use a country-of-origin designation in the course of what they do.It is an issue that I think is of great interest to us. It is an issue that is already used by a large number of entities and a large number of countries around the world. In New Zealand of course we have many of the meat companies branding their meat with the New Zealand brand. We have the dairy industry doing the same thing. The wine industry is very strongly orientated towards New Zealand—no doubt Stuart Smith will talk about that when he gets an opportunity to speak on this bill in a few moments' time. I guess the most famous one worldwide is Scotch whisky. You can buy Scotch whisky made in other parts of the world but it is always Scotch whisky wherever it is made provided they can get a licence to make it. That is the sort of thing that country-of-origin labelling has been used for.This issue is often confused with the food safety issue. When Jo Goodhew gets up to speak shortly I am sure she will have a view on that. It most certainly is not a food safety issue. I think it is an issue of interest for people and it gives people comfort to know where their food comes from. I suppose the most startling experience I have had of that is when you go to a supermarket in a place like Singapore or even Taiwan for that matter and you see products priced almost by country of origin. Whilst I do not think for a minute that is a trade barrier it certainly is an advantage to some countries to have their country's brand very firmly on the food. Country-of-origin labelling will have an impact on price; there is no doubt about that. It will have an impact on what people choose to pick off the supermarket shelf or the shelf of whatever place they choose to buy their food but it is pretty common around the world and it is certainly very influential in many parts of the world.The next issue I want to get on to is trade. I touched on that a moment ago. I do not think there is any way we could conceive that country-of-origin labelling is any form of trade barrier. I think that the select committee will no doubt have significant discussion on that issue and I am sure there will be submissions on that issue to the select committee on this bill. I do not think it can be conceived as that and it is practised in so many parts of the world that I think it is logical that it will form part of the natural process of food production and the sale of food.I want to talk for a minute about cost and this is the interesting thing about members' bills when they are drawn of course that the Government—or Government departments—has not done a lot of research on the cost or the ramifications of the potential implementation of the conditions of these bills so there is a lot of work to be done on this and the select committee will obviously ask for some of this information as well. There are quite a few things that you could look at and think there might be costs involved. The other issue that I think is really important is how you designate what qualifies to be labelled and what does not. How do you label a cabbage for example if it is sitting at your road gate? If you have got to package it straight away it is adding to the cost of that cabbage. I know that is a little frivolous issue but none the less we have struck that with a lot of the legislation in the food sector in New Zealand and so we end up putting cost on the little producer and the little retail business that we otherwise might not have. That will be some work for the select committee to get through the process too.The other area is the one of enforcement. Inevitably there are significant costs of enforcement in anything we do in New Zealand and there will be some costs of enforcement in this case too. I do not suppose you would ever need to go to a country-of-origin labelling process if everyone was honest but not everyone is honest so definitely there will be some enforcement issues. I think the other challenge for the industry will be how the labelling works and whether it needs to be consistent and I am sure it will. Those are the sorts of things that are pretty interesting and challenging for both the Government that has to implement this legislation if it gets through the third reading and certainly the select committee as we move along.I want to spend a moment talking about an area that provides much of the food for New Zealand and just have some empathy for the Bay of Plenty and Edgecumbe particularly. I think that area provides a lot of food for New Zealand and it currently has had some significant flooding issues. I of course come from an area—the Manawatū—that frequently floods as well. Of course our best food-producing areas in New Zealand are all low flood plains. In fact right round the world wherever you look in the world actually the best food-producing areas are low and generally river or flood plains—always vulnerable and at risk.That is a pretty brief summation of where I think we are at with this bill. I do want to congratulate the member on drawing a bill. He has a bit of luck from time to time. I was going to say my glass is full of Roundup but it is not; it is only half full. But congratulations Steffan and I think you have done pretty well with that. The National Government will be supporting this bill in its first reading and I look forward to the discussions we have in that select committee when the time comes. Thank you.