Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Look this bill is intended to create organic standards to ensure that claims that products are organic have integrity. But as one organics producer wrote to the select committee the current system while it may not be perfect still works well. Organic producers can choose which market they want to supply and therefore they can meet the standards of the consumers in that market.Domestic and overseas customers have diverse requirements when it comes to the standards for organics. Setting a standard to meet the highest commercial market will drive most organics producers in New Zealand out of the market. Setting the standard too low means that a standard becomes pointless. It may undermine the credibility of other regulatory systems. So many other small organic producers who did not want a single centralised regulatory system came before the select committee; they did not want to bear the costs of being in that system. Many of these organics producers are small scale in the domestic market and they will be forced into a Government regulatory regime that they don't agree with and that they said they didn't need. I am talking about those people who might have beehives and who've chosen not to use pesticides in the manufacture of their honey and other products derived from bees people who grow fruit and vegetables and who are on a pathway to an organic endpoint which actually has many stops. If their customers are confident in the product that they're buying then we believe actually that they should continue to be allowed to define their products as organic" to the market that they are selling into.Now there's no definition of "organics" in this bill except an organic product "is produced in compliance with [a] standard". Defining what the standards are is simply left to Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in Part 6 of the bill. There are no principles of what organics are. It simply gives MPI the power to define what "organic" means. But now we see that the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) introduced by the Minister has even removed that inadequate definition. Without warning during the second reading the Minister dropped a massive Supplementary Order Paper on the House—about 85 pages—without giving submitters or the Opposition the opportunity to consider it. There's been no consultation on this essentially redrafting of the bill. Now my colleague Mark Cameron a dairy farmer from Northland who sits on the Primary Production Committee tells me that the committee sat and considered this bill for two years. At any point the Government could have brought in amendments it could have offered those amendments to the public and the committee for consideration but they didn't do it—the Minister didn't do it.The ACT Party believes that the House has in fact been ambushed with this Supplementary Order Paper and at this stage of the bill's progress that's an extremely bad process. That's an abuse of the democratic process. We've had a look at the Supplementary Order Paper and while I'm quite happy to buy organic honey and to buy organic vegetables and organic meat from my butcher without the need for any standard as proposed under this bill this bill actually raised fundamental issues. There are a host of technical amendments. MPI could have proposed these in the past two years when it was before select committee but they didn't. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I just remind the member that discussing an SOP in detail is not for a second reading. The opportunity will come for that. You can refer to it but it's not the opportunity to go into detail in the SOP at this stage in the second reading.SIMON COURT: Thank you Mr Speaker. However I would like to point out that the bill that we are debating—the bill we are debating—has 85 pages of changes to the bill which was introduced to the House so I feel it is important to draw this to the attention of the House and to all of those people watching at home who will want to know that their organic products are going to continue to be available and that they'll be able to continue to manufacture them into the markets that they've sold. Now new clause 3A creates something that only this Government could come up with: an obligation for an undefined and ever-mutating principle of the Treaty of Waitangi to be observed. Why is this needed—why is this needed? The ACT Party would challenge the Government members to stand up and explain why a Treaty of Waitangi clause is required in a bill which proposes to set standards for organic products or food—DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has been warned once. We're not here to discuss what is in the Supplementary Order Paper. You're discussing the second reading for what actually went on at the select committee. The member has now been told twice so please stick to what the second reading requires which is a discussion essentially of what happened at select committee.SIMON COURT: Well Mr Speaker thank you for your guidance and clarity. I will complete the ACT Party's perspective on this bill without reflecting on this SOP which is to come. We'll assume that we'll get to debate that at another time.But look this bill as proposed had ACT's support at first reading. Currently based on the direction that the Government has set we cannot support the bill. We support people who manufacture products that consumers want to eat that they want to put on their skin—organic products that are manufactured to the standards that the market that they're selling into wants to buy. But that's not what this bill will do so ACT will oppose this bill."