Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Tēnā koe Te Māngai. It's my absolute privilege actually to rise this afternoon and I really do want to commend our colleague Gareth Hughes from the Green Party who has stewarded this bill through and has been very active in terms of his advocacy across the House for the rights of consumers to know where their produce comes from. I know it's no small feat to have to navigate with both sides of the House to get to an end point. As my colleague Mark Patterson said just prior this is the type of legislation that can very quickly become very complicated: the overlays of implications with international trade partners roiling that right through to our domestic citizens' right to know where their produce comes from. Yes it has been quite a journey and I know that the member Gareth Hughes picked it up from one of his former colleagues. So I just want to acknowledge the journey that this bill has been on and the work that has gone on in that corner.I mean look I'm a fairly new member on the Primary Production Committee so I didn't really have the opportunity to hear probably a majority of the precursory advice that was given by a range of different officials but I do just probably want to acknowledge the history that this concept I guess has had within our domestic environment. Back in 2005 we had Australia—at that point they were legislating for their own country-of-origin labelling. Us at that time we had some concerns about the implications that it would have on our trade obligations if we were to do that and there was some quite strong lobbying at that time. For a range of reasons we determined that a voluntary scheme was going to be the best scheme. So companies or producers could label their produce but it was voluntary and the regulations have been relatively light.But over the years there've been a number of studies. And I actually want to commend the work of Horticulture New Zealand who have been very proactive in this area actually; same with pork NZ—the New Zealand pork association—Mark Patterson: Pork board.KIRITAPU ALLAN: —the pork board; thank you very much for the correction in my terminology there—who have really provided strong industry support over many years to produce information that can give the Government surety that consumers really do want to understand exactly where their produce has been raised what it's been eating and where it's from. And we will pick up on the example of pork because that there is a classic example where you're buying fresh pork down at your supermarket and you see it's a New Zealand product. What you don't know is that it's probably been semi-frozen—or it could have been; not probably but could have been—and imported in from elsewhere and at point of entry in New Zealand it's been cut up packaged and then sold to our supermarkets. We think that we're consuming a domestically produced product but we're not.So I saw some statistics that the pork board had put up in their submission to us. It was very informative. I saw a graph that showed that in about 2014 you started to see at that juncture that New Zealanders had started to consume more foreign or more imported pork products than domestic pork products. That came as a shock to me because I think that most New Zealanders do have a strong association and affiliation for wanting to protect or to consume our local produce. So where we as consumers—and like my colleague Mark Patterson and others actually from across the House—have the option to know exactly where that food is from no doubt many of us will choose to support our locally produced products.Mark Patterson: New Zealand first!KIRITAPU ALLAN: Ha ha! Aotearoa first; New Zealand first that's right. It's all about our locally produced products.Look many of us from the regions we harp on and on about how it is our primary producers that are the backbones of our regional economies. For example where I'm from on the East Coast in the absence of a thriving domestic and international market for locally produced produce our economic backbone in the East Coast would be decimated if we didn't have a fully thriving production across all aspects of it.I had the opportunity recently to go over to Shanghai with some New Zealand kiwifruit growers. We went and had a good look at—well actually we went to a number of places in China but what we were doing was looking at the way in which New Zealand produce was consumed by international consumers. What we are known for whether it be honey whether it be dairy whether it be pretty much all of our horticultural produce—whatever it was anything that was grown here was seen as a highly priced but also a highly valuable healthy and almost akin to organic product. The value of Brand New Zealand" in an international environment—Mark Patterson: Beef and lamb.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Beef and lamb. Yes that's right—I give kudos to my friend there—but the value of the international brand of New Zealand to an international consumer as well as the domestic consumer is worth volumes. You could see produce on the supermarket shelves. They looked relatively similar but where it carried that brand—that this was made and produced in New Zealand—that product would sell I think probably 9.9 times out of 10 for a premium. So I think that that requirement for us here at the domestic level and at the international level to really invest in "Brand New Zealand" is something that we can all be really proud of.Look we know that through the select committee process a number of amendments to the bill were made—and again kudos to our colleague Gareth for his work in terms of liaising with the Minister the Hon Damien O'Connor with the New Zealand First team and with the Opposition to strike the balance to ensure that what we were doing was fit for purpose. So basically one of the key amendments is that we've effectively rewritten the bill to require that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the Hon Kris Faafoi an outstanding Minister—it's for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend that the regulations be made under the relevant provisions in the Fair Trading Act. That will do a whole range of things but basically the bill's going to apply to packaged or unpackaged foods that contain one type of vegetable fruit meat or seafood—and we did have that extra addition of cured pork and that came in at the later stages in the select committee process and again actually it was the Hon Nathan Guy from the Opposition that was really supportive of that initiative. So I do really want to commend the Opposition for coming along on that ground because ultimately it's our industries and our consumers both that benefit.Look we do know that this bill does create an offence regime. It creates offences for falsifying or misleading labelling. Again if we come back to that example of pork here in New Zealand—the fact that we need to know exactly where that product comes from and the whole journey of that product and if we don't or if it's mislabelled then it comes with a fine of up to 10 grand for individuals and $50000 for organisations. That's a substantive disincentive measure—Kieran McAnulty: That's right.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you Kieran McAnulty. I know this is a topic very close to your heart and I commend you too for your work in stewarding this through especially—yeah no; I won't go there.So look I think that it does create a disincentive or a penalty regime that will require a heightened level of compliance—50 grand for any organisation is a fair chunk of cash that I think will act as an effective disincentive.Look there was a range of other food types that we did look to and like my colleague Mark Patterson said those will be conversations for another day but it didn't feel like there was an absolute opposition to things like nuts and various forms of seed but the regime does start to get very complicated. So that will be a conversation for another day. As a start-off bill we're very proud that we can endorse this. I commend it to the House."