O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I acknowledge the good work of the chair of the Primary Production Committee over there a man who should be a Minister in my view but the Government obviously does not understand true potential.Can I firstly acknowledge as other speakers have the wine industry and all those connected to it and all those people living in Marlborough because—and Stuart Smith is over there—it is a tough time there and I would just like to acknowledge their efforts to get the region back up on its feet. We wish you all the very best.The winegrowers will probably be hoping that like a good wine good things take time. In view of the fact that this piece of legislation has taken 10 years to come into force they will be hoping that it is a good piece of legislation. I have to say that the select committee put its mind to that objective and I think it generally did a good job but we did have a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) brought to the Chamber at the latter stages to tidy up a few things that we had missed—that officials had not alerted us to. SOP 244 was about the interested persons who may oppose a proposed removal of a geographical indicator or someone from that.This is effectively a technical bill. It is trying to protect New Zealand winegrowers in their regions where they grow the wine and produce it and it is trying to protect their right to retain and build on their region's reputation through the fine products they sell whether it be Marlborough sauvignon blanc Central Otago pinot noir or indeed Nelson pinot gris. We are getting an evolution and a development in the wine industry and it is something I think we should be very proud of. This bill will hopefully help them to move along that path.But we did have to look at some of the minor technical issues and one in the Supplementary Order Paper that I referred to which Labour supported is a tidy up. It is around protection for individuals in any part of the system. Most of the time we have to protect the rights of smaller players. I refer to a very innovative wine company in Central Otago that ended up putting resveratrol back in its wine and marketing it as a positive aspect of the wine. Resveratrol is a by-product of the ultrafiltration process in the wine industry just as permeate is a by-product of the ultrafiltration process for milk. The dairy industry has been adding permeate back for years and years. No one blinks an eye.But when this innovative company in Central Otago added resveratrol back in and put a sticker on the bottle it effectively had the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) telling it to take that wine off the shelves. There was a slight glitch I have to say by an overenthusiastic marketer who said that there might be additional health benefits from the additional resveratrol. The long and short of that is that we had a real battle to get MPI to pull its head in and acknowledge that resveratrol like permeate is a by-product of the normal process of making wine—the point being that we hope as a select committee we have got the right protections in this legislation for all the big and little players to ensure that their efforts and their passion in building a wine that is unique to their region can be protected over time and hopefully to ensure that all their efforts in marketing will amount to them getting greater value for their efforts.I think this has done a lot of other good things as well. We have changed the percentage of grapes that must come from a region if you are to put on a geographical indicator say that the wine is from that region and be protected by this legislation. We have changed that percentage from 85 percent to 100 percent and I think that is great. The industry has developed and evolved to a point where it should be able to get sufficient grapes to do that.I guess they might be mind-numbingly technical issues for many but I have to say the vast majority of New Zealanders enjoy wine and the wine industry and I think they want to as the officials reported in their report to the select committee be sure that they are getting what they are told they are getting. We want to provide consumers of wines or spirits with greater certainty that a wine or spirit labelled with a geographical indicator actually originated from the region identified by the geographical indicator—a very fair assumption by consumers. So why would the Government not do that with food? Why will it not do it with food if we are so determined to do it with wine? In fact there is a very good argument that says that wine is far less risky as a consumable product than is food and that if we know where the food is coming from and have some assurance about the possible or the likely or the most probable way that it is being produced then consumers can make the judgment when they purchase that. But this Government continues to block country-of-origin labelling which Australia and New Zealand should have but we have an exemption to. That is somewhat strange.I know the members over there cannot get the connection between geographical indicators that are designed to assure consumers about wine and geographical indicators that are designed to assure consumers about food. The Government does not want to assure consumers about the food they have got. Government members are consistently inconsistent—I will certainly say that to them. I think it would be great to see them bring to this House—in fact I think they need only change the regulations in order to be able to actually implement compulsory country-of-origin labelling in New Zealand. Labour will do that when we get into Government next year—[Interruption]—so you can take some credit for it and do it now or you can wait and we will do it at the end of next year.As my colleague David Shearer said the new movement on this legislation—it has sat around like a bottle of old wine for 10 years—has been because of a possible EU trade agreement. I think every one of us—well we were all enthusiastic until Brexit—was looking forward to an EU trade agreement that would have broken down the barriers that are currently in the EU for a lot of our products. I am not sure where that is going to go but one of the things that Europe does do is enforce and promote and highlight and enhance geographical indicators for its food and we do not. We do not even have country-of-origin labelling. We do not even say it comes from New Zealand let alone that some of the food we consume may come from the Manawatū. I understand there is some very good lamb that comes from the Manawatū. In fact I know the chairman of the Primary Production Committee Ian McKelvie has brought it on a regular basis to the select committee and I think it should be marketed as Manawatū lamb. There is Canterbury lamb which we have had for many years and we have beef from Rangitīkei or whatever. But until we develop stories that connect to the wonderful geographical regions in this country that can produce such good food I think we are missing huge potential value for the producers and for the country. Geographical indicators as they are implemented in Europe must be implemented here in New Zealand and we must respect one another's geographical indicators before we have a trade agreement with the EU. The Government knows that. It knows that until we take the next step around food there is no deal with the EU because those countries have a culture and a history that acknowledges the value of the cheeses and the food and the meats that come from different parts of Europe. We should never try to undermine that. We should be trying to enhance it. We should be trying to develop it here in New Zealand rather than just sending frozen lamb to the EU countries and expecting them to pay a whole lot more for it. If we can develop a story and get lamb from a particular part of New Zealand and tell a story and show them how we grow it with such pride and passion I am sure they will pay a little bit more for it. I have to put on the table as I did earlier in this legislation that I would like to develop a geographical indicator for Golden Bay—and for the West Coast. Golden Bay is a geographical area in the north of my electorate—like Marlborough is in Mr Stuart Smith's—and it has an amazing group of innovative people. It has an amazing dairy industry it has aquaculture and it has a fishing industry and we could develop a geographical indicator that gives us a premium for Golden Bay - produced products. That is where we must go—like Marlborough producers did so successfully with their sauvignon blanc. I congratulate them on what they did. What we have to do is learn from that success and apply geographical indicators across the country for all our primary produce. Thank you.