Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to speak to the Food Safety Law Reform Bill in this second reading. Before I go on to my substantive comments I just acknowledge Minister Bennett for shepherding this legislation so beautifully through to this point—it is Minister Bennett's time to shine—and recognise my Labour Party colleagues who have played a part in the select committee process to date: immediately to my right Rino Tirikatene Damien O'Connor and other members of the Primary Production Committee. One of the pleasant surprises that I have had in my now 6 months in the House has been that when it comes to these kinds of issues there is actually a reasonably pragmatic and workmanlike approach across party lines to dealing with these sorts of issues where we can—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Workperson.MICHAEL WOOD: Workperson—thank you very much. It is always good to have the National Government front bench ensure that we say the right things and focus on the big issues. But when we are confronted with these issues there is a pragmatic approach to doing what we need to do in terms of public good regulation in many cases and this is one.Of course this issue came out of—and this is a real mouthful but it is important to go back to the source of these issues—the independent Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident which of course we know is the false botulism scare that hit a couple of years ago. It was extremely serious—extremely serious. I was reading some of the Minister's comments before and this goes to the heart of why food safety really matters and why getting this bill right is important. Food comprises 60 percent of our merchandise exports brings in $27 billion of export income and directly supports 80000 jobs across our economy. Those export markets that we send our produce to whether it is milk powder as was the case in the false botulism scandal whether it is meat whether it is fresh dairy whether it is apples—whatever it is those foreign markets that we are sending them to that generate the incomes and the jobs need to have absolute confidence in the integrity of our food safety systems as of course do the New Zealand consumers who are major consumers of those products as well.So there are really two issues within here. One is I guess the moral imperative to ensure that our food safety systems do deliver safe food to people. It would be wrong if we as a Parliament allowed our food safety systems to put out food that is not safe that makes people unwell. But secondly our international reputation as someone who you can do business with as someone who you can trade with with confidence absolutely rests upon these kinds of systems being right.So what this bill does is amend three Acts: the Food Act the Animal Products Act and the Wine Act. Largely the Wine Act is made consistent with the provisions of the other Act. Really what we are doing here is engaging a piece of public-good regulation. I just want to touch on that principle for a moment because of course whenever we get into these areas—and it is reflected in some of the submissions that I have read through—there is always a tension there is always a balance. When we put public-good regulation in place we are saying there are some things that we want to achieve as a society here that are important for the common good. Generally speaking when we do that there may be some costs and some inconveniences to some people who are caught up within that system but what we have to do is balance those things up and strike a reasonable balance. As I review the bill as it stands particularly with some of the small changes that have been made by the select committee it does seem to me that we have struck a pretty good balance here in terms of getting the public-good objectives ensuring safe food systems without being extremely onerous.Some of the key provisions of the bill include strengthening of the provisions around food control plans putting in proper requirements that people who are producing and serving up food actually have adequate food control plans. This seems to me to be pretty common sense; we need to make sure that those are fit for purpose. The bill also talks about national programmes and ensuring that those national programmes around food safety have proper oversight and that food businesses that are operating under those national programmes actually have to register their businesses in accordance with regulations that might take place under those national programmes. So there is a range of very sensible pragmatic measures here that I think can give our consumers and our trading partners far more confidence in our food safety systems.One final comment I will just make which my colleague Damien O'Connor I think made in his first reading speech is that I do think there is a bit more consideration for us to make about potentially the separation of policy implementation and enforcement which is currently all there in the Ministry of Primary Industries. That is a possible further step we can look at. I commend this bill to the House.