Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am very pleased to rise and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in this first reading of the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I was watching the previous bill unfolding when Mr Mallard was in the chair and I saw him make a point of advising members that they should not be reading their speeches. That being the case I was not going to prepare very much. Seeing that your perhaps-slightly-more-tolerant self is in the chair now I wonder whether that might not have been the best idea. However having listened to speeches from the Government side I am glad that I did not because I have kind of changed tack with where I was going on this.The first thing I want to do is congratulate Mr Browning on having his bill drawn and on bringing it to the House at this most appropriate time. I have got a lot of time for Steffan Browning whom I am on the Primary Production Committee with. I think he is one of the few remaining true Greens in a party that is drifting more and more to the political left and becoming less environmental in focus. It seems that the old-time environmentalists are moving on and a new generation is coming in so it would be very nice for this bill to pass through the House pass into law and become perhaps something of a legacy for Steffan Browning as we could say a true Green".We were talking about this yesterday with a number of colleagues and were wondering whether the bill would in fact have the support to pass in the House assuming that National would not be supporting it. When we got a whisper that National was going to support the bill at first reading being a suspicious-minded character I started to wonder why. A couple of the things that have been said during Mr McKelvie's speech and also during Jo Goodhew's speech have given me cause to suspect that I know what is going to happen with this.The first thing I want to say is that I want to refute the claims that both the affable chairman and the former Minister have made regarding food safety. This is absolutely a food safety issue. You can dress it up as choice if you like and choice is part of it but that choice is about food safety. Ian McKelvie said that knowing where food has come from serves as a comforter for some people. Well yes they have the comfort of knowing that the food they are buying is safe because it is from somewhere that can be trusted. Personally I do not knowingly buy food that comes from some countries in the world because I do not trust their standards or I do not particularly like their welfare standards that they apply to animals and so forth. We all know that there are countries in the world that use chemicals and procedures and so forth in food production that we simply would not allow here.My suspicious mind carried on down that track. When Jo Goodhew mentioned the Australian model and the select committee and that we have to make sure that the bill is simple and cost effective I was pretty much confirmed in my thinking that National has decided to support this bill so that it can water it down and turn it into something that it was not meant to be.From my point of view—from New Zealand First's point of view—Steffan's bill probably does not actually go far enough. We would like all food to be labelled and we would like technology to be made use of so that there are QR codes and so forth on packaging that can tell the entire history of a food be it manufactured food or processed food. There are possibilities now with online information where a consumer can have access to all the background information about a food—where it is processed what the ingredients are and so forth. It does not all have to be written on the label; there are ways in which that information can be accessed.We would of course like to see this country-of-origin food bill extended very much in scope not simply to include fresh produce and single-food products but to cover off everything else as well. But I think it is very important that here and now we flag a concern that this bill is going to reach the select committee and then perhaps go through a watering-down process pretty much as the National Government did with ACT's three-strikes bill which would have been quite good had it gone through in the format that was originally proposed. It ended up being some sort of wishy-washy shadow that then enabled the National Government to say that it had addressed the issue. I suspect very much that that is going to be the case here. The Government is going to say that it supported this bill that it became law and "Look we have addressed country-of-origin labelling." and in fact we are going to end up we something that does not actually provide the consumer with the information the choice and the reassurance that they deserve and that they need. But we will see.I look forward to this bill going through the Primary Production Committee. I look forward to the submissions. I very much hope that I am wrong about the possibility of the bill being watered down but we shall see. On that note I congratulate the member again and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you."