Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Well it has been—I have to go back to remember now—nearly a year since we last debated this bill in the House but obviously not since we last debated it in the Primary Production Committee. I want to echo something that my colleague Steffan Browning has just said in congratulating the new Minister for Food Safety on picking up this bill. I do actually believe that he is listening to the concerns of the committee about particular aspects of this bill—notably to do with the costs involved in the testing and compliance regime for smaller producers. Since his elevation to Minister-hood he seems to have sort of morphed from being National's attack dog to being quite a reasonable approachable chap. Maybe it is a case of taking the school's worst troublemaker and turning him into a prefect.I am not going to take up too much of the House's time at this particular stage for two reasons. One is that there is not a lot of new ground to go over. I tend to agree with most of the speakers so far and certainly with members of the committee. We do have a good consensus approach to this process. The other reason is primarily that a lot of what I was going to say was connected with country-of-origin labelling which many submitters felt should have been in the bill and a number of members of the select committee felt should have been in the bill. Of course as Mr Browning has been fortunate enough to have his member's bill drawn covering that aspect it has kind of taken the wind out of those sails a little bit. But it is still pertinent to the discussion around this bill because it was something that I think many in the industry and many in the public presumed would be a core part of a bill that is to do with reforming food safety law. Perhaps the name was something that made people feel that perhaps things like genetic modification labelling requirements and those sorts of things would have been covered by it when of course as we know and as the ministerial statement from Minister Goodhew reads when she was introducing it: The bill is an important part of putting the false botulism scare behind us. It illustrates the Government's commitment to ensuring the safety and suitability of food which is vitally important for the health of consumers—both in New Zealand and overseas—and our international trade reputation."That is the guts of it and that is why we have ended up with this Food Safety Law Reform Bill which is aimed pretty much fairly and squarely at major producers. That is the way things have to be in a country like New Zealand where as we have heard three-quarters of our overseas income is derived from the primary sector and much of that from food. We produce and sell this food at very high quality to discerning markets on the basis that people around the world trust New Zealand's reputation and trust that our processes for producing food will be safe and can be guaranteed to be safe.It does have the flip side of course—that imposing those same requirements on smaller innovative artisan producers may make things untenable for them. Without going back over all the numbers that have been thrown around it does seem that there is a case for the smaller producer to be treated differently not in terms of the required safety outcomes but perhaps in terms of some of the costs and procedures that are involved in determining how records about the safety of process are kept. I have suggested to the Minister that perhaps in the case of smaller producers—maybe up to a certain size volume weight production or value even—they could be treated differently in that the final product might be the only part of the process that is required to be tested. Whereas smaller producers should still be required to have a food plan and to record that food plan and to adhere to it the individual testing along the way of each step which is an essential matter for larger producers might not be all that necessary for smaller producers because of the scale of their operation because at the end of the day it is the finished product that is required to be safe. If something does go wrong with a smaller-scale production it is likely to be very much quicker and easier to locate the source of that and also to stop any potentially dangerous or contaminated product from getting out into the market.I think that is one of the things that the Minister has considered. I do not know whether he is completely online with that suggestion but he does appreciate the need for something else to be done. Perhaps his thinking if I am correct is that we are moving towards smaller producers perhaps proving the nature of their operation and through doing so winning some concessions in terms of the number of times that they might have to be tested.I think there are certainly things that the ministry could work on. If we have a cost recovery for getting inspectors into remote places to carry out inspections these could perhaps be sort of corralled so that you have got one inspector coming up for a few days into a certain area who does a number of businesses so they are not all having to shell out a couple of grand for travel costs and those sorts of things. There could be a coordinated approach. I certainly do get the impression that the new Minister—and I presume the officials because they certainly take their lead from him—has a regime like that in mind.I think we will probably arrive at a point through the committee process and through the Minister's intervention where it is possible for us to ensure that the food that we produce at any scale is safe for consumption both domestically and overseas and yet we are not stifling that innovation and we are not making it untenable for smaller producers such as the likes of Biddy whom I think most of us have visited and some more than once—and a quite delightful experience it is too especially with the model railway. I do not know whether you have been there yet Minister but there is a model railway and cheese and how they work together is fascinating. So looking at the regulatory impact statement the objectives of this regime are of course to make sure that "food is safe and suitable public health is protected risks are identified and managed New Zealand's good reputation increases access to overseas markets; and market access is facilitated."Again that comes down to the perception of New Zealand as being a trustworthy nation and having sophisticated processes and so forth. In terms of some of the backstory behind that it is interesting that we are amending the Wine Act as well. As some members of the House will be able to attest if many consumers saw what goes on in wineries before the finished product arrives in the bottle on the supermarket shelf they might be appalled. At harvest what go into the vats are crushed grapes yes but this also includes dust and dirt and spiders and wasps unmentionable things that vineyard workers have stepped in diesel and all manner of unmentionable matter that is then purified by the action of fermentation and we end up with a lovely crystal-clear translucent and somewhat delicious beverage at the other end of it. Yet for a very long time—in fact if we go back into the history of wine production as with cheese as with butter through certainly the history of this country and across Europe—there were no standards and no means of attaining a standard anyway other than the final test that if the wine did not kill you it was good and if it did something had gone wrong.So as I say without wanting to take up too much more time of the House New Zealand First will continue to support this bill. We believe that there are still modifications that can and will be made to it. I think at the end of that process we will end up with a piece of legislation that is very fit for purpose. Thank you."