Food Bill

Part 4 of the Food Bill relates to the enforcement agencies, the territorial local authorities, and the other organisations that will be expected to—and obliged to now, of course—go out and ensure that the systems we are putting in place here will be met for the benefit of mainly local consumers, I guess, so that those people buying and selling food around the food markets, farmers’ markets, and other places can deliver safe food to consumers. We do not want to belittle in any way the importance of this. There was much debate around the requirement for monitoring, as we said before, the relative risk relating to the provision of food and the sale of it to people.

Farmers’ markets are a relatively new evolution in food sales. They are certainly far more significant now than they were when the review of these Acts was first initiated back in the early 2000s under the Hon Annette King. Things like food markets were very low key. Now, thankfully, they are a far larger part of the whole food supply chain, and if we here had our way, they would be far greater. We would remove from the two big supermarket chains the absolute and total dominance that they have in the supply of food to Kiwis up and down this country. An interesting aside, I must say, is that a study out of Otago University said that if people purchased their fruit and vegetables from farmers’ markets, rather than buying them from the supermarket chains, they would save $2,500 a year, on average. That is something I would like to crow from the rooftops, and I am doing that today to promote the farmers’ markets, because it is about the only way that we will keep the supermarkets honest.

We are now dealing with Part 4 of the bill. Again, I guess, it goes through a whole lot of technical requirements, such as the withdrawal of recognition and the ability of, as I say, territorial authorities to come in. At the moment, of course, they have pretty much sole charge of local food outlets in terms of restaurants, takeaway bars, and all the rest of it. There are changing oversight requirements for them, but in the end they will still have to do a lot of the front-line work. But, of course, it will be checking different requirements that are related to food safety plans and to general provisions laid out in the bill here.

The cost recovery provisions were something that the Primary Production Committee did focus on, in spite of my comment earlier to the Minister for Food Safety that her focus and that of the National Government might have been just on cost savings, which is kind of common. We were looking at taking a balanced approach to cost, which could have been incurred on small businesses unnecessarily, and I think we have got that balance about right. I mean, we do, of course, go through in fine detail the penalties, the fees, and the charges—all of those particular provisions here. I am not going to go and quote from the bill because I think it would probably bore people to tears, but there are not too many things in here that we have not thought of, keeping in mind that the cost of compliance is not over the top.

The offences are clearly in keeping with the risk and the threat to public health, but we run right through things like offences involving intentionally hindering or obstructing officials. There was, of course, the ability for people and officials to enter without warrants, which is a highly emotional provision in many pieces of legislation. Officials can get a bit overzealous, and if they have the ability to rush in and investigate, take food off the shelves, and take it away without warrant, then that is a significant power that needs cautious oversight. I hope—and I do believe—that the committee has got it about right. We did not spend too much time reviewing these particular provisions in the second round and in the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister put forward, Supplementary Order Paper 278, but we believe that we have got it about right.

I am pleased to make a contribution on Part 4 of the Food Bill. I would like to pick up on the remarks that my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor made regarding the power to enter premises without a search warrant, which is conferred by this bill. I understand that the Primary Production Committee considered that and some amendment has been made, but I am particularly interested in the provision that involves marae. I know that certain marae around the country are food businesses now. They have commercial activities or cafes, or they sell food in their wharekai or across their marae facilities, so they clearly fall within the ambit of this bill.

I guess it is reassuring to know that the select committee, I understand, has taken consideration of the fact that it is not appropriate, even though there may be good cause for a search warrant to be carried out—there may be some terrible gastric outbreak, and to try to find the source of it a marae may come into the mix, and it may be important that the authorities act quickly. I think that sensitivity does need to be applied, particularly as we know that maraes do perform a lot of cultural practices for Māori whānau and hapū. I am particularly thinking of when a tangi is on. It would be insensitive for authorities to barge on to a marae and barge into a wharekai without a search warrant, claiming at that particular time the powers they have under this bill, when there are so many other things that are going on with the marae whānau. That is just in the event that there are customary practices, tikanga, and other things going on around a tangi. So I understand that under this provision they are not allowed to enter on to a marae without a search warrant when those sorts of things are taking place. We do commend that aspect.

Otherwise, there are wide powers conferred under Part 4 to the many different territorial authorities and all of the different charge officers and the like who will be performing functions under the Act. Obviously, the functions have all been well thought through. But one thing that I think will be interesting to see operate in practice is the wide powers that are conferred on the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries. If you go through the bill, particularly in this part, there are very wide decision-making powers that rest with the chief executive. Those approvals relate to documents, facilities, and persons, and it is quite a large discretion. I would hope that the chief executive would have the right skills and the right advice being given in relation to all of these matters, because it is a statutory power that they have, and a lot rests on that role. I think back to the former Ministry of Agriculture, I guess. The senior role used to be in the hands of the director-general. The director-general role was different from a chief executive - type role. The director-general generally had some sort of agricultural or agribusiness-type background. Obviously, a chief executive is quite different. It is modern Government corporatisation-type State sector terminology.

I just want to take a short call. Part 4 is a significant chunk of the Food Bill. It runs for about a third of this massive tome that we have here, which the Primary Production Committee has been working on assiduously for nearly 3 years, bringing it to a tumultuous and very exciting end as part of this Committee. Part 4 goes through the nuts and bolts in terms of the need for this bill and how it is going to operate in practice. I believe that what it will do, and this has been touched on before by the Minister for Food Safety as well, is ensure that the compliance charges and complications and some of the ambiguities of the previous legislation are removed. It will enable compliance issues to be simplified so much that it is estimated that about $40 million or $50 million, I think, will be saved, particularly by small businesses, which are obviously very concerned about that sort of money. It will make a big difference to their ability to make a profit, so that is very good.

The second part to what I think this bill does, in a sense, is that it really identifies the risk and how we are going to deal with that risk. As I said in the beginning, at the introduction of the bill, I believe that what this bill does is move the emphasis from the premises or the proprietor across to the risk that that particular food poses and then on to how to mitigate and build regulations around that risk. This part, in a sense, gives the guts and it gives the detail in and around that.

My colleague mentioned the ability to search. This is something that is very much on the minds of New Zealanders, as the Government Communications Security Bureau legislation was smashed through Parliament, ignoring protocols and opportunities to argue it and negotiate it sufficiently. It is also relevant at the moment to the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) that is being looked at, because that bill will give immigration officials much greater ability to conduct searches, knock down doors in the middle of the night etc., which was not previously possible under the existing law.

So I would like the Minister for Food Safety to perhaps take a call on this issue and reassure people, because I do think that it is at the front of people’s minds, that the search procedures as contained in Part 4 of the bill will be sufficient to ensure that we are able to crack down on those operators who are not operating responsibly but also, at the same time, that we do not step over the bounds of our ability to have basic human rights—that people do not come crashing through our doors and kick over our chip fryer or whatever. So that is, I think, the balance here, and I call on the Minister to give us that assurance and just outline the procedures that are in place to ensure that that balance is maintained.

I refer also to what the previous speaker Rino Tirikatene was just talking about in terms of marae. I do think that is quite a specific and, in many ways, quite a unique situation that exists in New Zealand, the way that marae food is prepared and distributed to people, but I think the bill deals with this adequately. It comes in on clause 294 on page 274. That gives you the idea actually—we are only halfway though this bill but we are up to page 274. People who are sitting at home watching this must be thinking “We’re really making big progress here!”. It is the day before the Budget and we are thumbing through 400 or 500 pages of the Food Bill. Not that it is not important, but it is just building up to that momentous day tomorrow when for the first time this Government will be able to announce a Budget that is in the black. I think that is wonderful. I think that it is wonderful that after five tries the Minister of Finance has finally got a Budget that is going to go into the black. I think that is wonderful and he deserves recognition. The only thing that we do not mention is that every year that you run a deficit, you have to borrow. So what we have ended up doing is having a $60 billion debt that somehow—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman, I am getting back on to the bill now.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Please do.

There is a way forward. There is a track that is leading inevitably back to this bill. I will take only a couple more minutes and then I would really appreciate the Minister talking on the issue of search and surveillance.

But, certainly, the $60 billion debt is a big debt to overcome. That means that we have to be sure that we are able to export confidently—see, I told you I was going to segue back on to this bill again. Being able to confidently export our food and make sure that our food is safe will enable us to give confidence to the export markets that they will be able to buy our products. So it all comes back to the same thing.

I do not want to say too much more. Once again, Part 4 has been gone through very comprehensively. There are pages and pages and pages here from the previous draft of the bill that have been eliminated and whole new sections have been written in. I think those people out there in the food industry and in both importing and exporting food will have some confidence that the bill has struck the right balance, with the exception, with the clarification, of the search provisions that are contained in Part 4. I would welcome the Minister being able to speak to those.

Speaking on Part 4 of the Food Bill, this is one of the core points of the bill. There were the tiers of risk. That was an important part of the bill—isolating and working out which food industries would be considered under what level of bureaucracy. But the other point of the bill was to what I would call homogenise the approach of local territorial authorities throughout the country. There are people whom I know—farmers market producers and the like—who will be selling in one part of a district, of a region, and they will be operating under one local territorial authority, one council, then the next day, or even later the same day, they will be wanting to sell the same stuff in another area and yet were being mucked around and had different standards or hoops to jump through as the different councils used the existing Food Act in different ways to interpret it. They had different fees and, of course, it was crazy that quite often they had to pay multiple fees to do the same thing, even though they were only 20 kilometres away.

I am aware that in Christchurch a number of the councils have at last come together in a sort of a hub and allowed producers to work to the one level of inspection and fees. In a way, this is what this part—this is my interpretation of what this part of the bill is strongly about. That is one of the reasons the Green Party supports that. It is a very common-sense approach to try to have some commonality throughout the country. But what it also means is that we will still have to watch and make sure—and I say we; that is, the community—that we do not get little tsars of food safety inspectors who still try to make life miserable for people from time to time, because it still does come down to personalities and people. But the bill is certainly setting up the way to make sure that there is this sort of more homogenous approach. That is good.

All the same, there is an issue around fees, where the fee structures ideally are within a band, and it is not meant to be going over the top. The bill allows for the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries to curtail some councils if they are going over the top, and to potentially allow other people to do those inspections and everything to keep the costs down. So, again, we support that part of keeping costs off our producers. I think there possibly does need to be—and maybe it will come through the regulations—a little bit more clarity, all the same, of what those costs actually would be. As I say, we just need to keep those costs down.

The search and surveillance part was an area of great concern for a lot of submitters, and it still is for a lot of people. As Damien O’Connor was saying before, that is through a number of Acts—through all sorts of legislation and regulation. We have these rather strong powers through the Search and Surveillance Act, actually, that allow strong levels of inspection and, basically, breaking and entering at times. I have supported the intent of that in different public meetings, because if there is something that has gone wrong and if there are people being admitted to hospital after contracting a food-borne illness and if people are becoming seriously ill, we want that stopped. We want to be able to follow through and find where that food comes from. We want to also know where it has been distributed to. If that requires breaking down a door because we cannot get hold of somebody, I think that is very sensible and practical. Again, it will be a matter of how that aspect of the Food Bill, or, when it comes to it, the Search and Surveillance Act, is used—that it is not used inappropriately in any way—

I move, That the question be now put.

I can see the Food Bill is so big that it is falling apart in my hands here. I hope it does not once it has been passed. This is actually at the heart of the amendment brought to the Primary Production Committee by the Minister for Food Safety. The issue here sparked by the botulism debacle was that the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Minister, and the National Government got caught with their pants down to some extent, because they did not know whether they had the ability to recall the infant formula or whether they would be subject to a legal challenge by Nutricia or Danone, as it is now, of course. So the uncertainty around the recall provisions by the Minister gave rise to the amendment that is, effectively, addressed in this Part 4 of the bill here now.

The select committee looked very, very carefully at this, and the consideration rested on one word. It is a word that is spoken of but not often implemented in Parliament—that is, “reasonable”. There is, I think, judicial precedent around the word “reasonable”, and the committee asked whether there was a requirement for officials to be reasonably convinced, I guess, in summary, that there was good cause for recall. You could take either side of the debate. Some could say “Well, of course officials are always reasonable, and we have to provide them with the powers to recall, because the risks are great.” That is, indeed, what many of us would think.

However, I personally was able to bring to the table an example of when officials were not reasonable. They had demanded the recall of a product—a wine-based product—and almost put a small, innovative wine producer out of business. It was quite ironic, really, because the Government has just handed out money through the Primary Growth Partnership to the wine industry for innovation, and yet a few months prior to that it had stamped down and clamped down on an innovative wine producer. I am not going to use the name of the wine, but I will say that resveratrol was the component. It is a by-product of the wine-making process, the filtration process. It was added back into the wine, and it could be said it added a slight health component to the wine to be consumed.

The point is that officials, because it was a small producer, demanded the recall take place. That was a huge cost and impost on that person. Of course, the officials did not exert the same authority—or were not sure whether they had the authority to do it—over someone like Nutricia or Fonterra. So the Minister, quite rightly, I guess, wanted the matter clarified. The amendment brought the matter to the select committee, the committee considered it, and I think we have arrived at the reasonable position that we trust the officials to initiate a recall only when necessary. I think on balance we should support the officials. If we have got the right Government and the right Minister in place, I have every confidence. We have some concerns at the moment. No personal reference to the Minister—it is just that her regime leaves a bit to be desired. Under a Labour-led Government I would have every confidence that officials would make the right decision if a recall had to be made. As a cross-party Committee we have decided on, I think, a measure and a threshold that is fair and protects New Zealand’s reputation and position.

💬 Ian McKelvie: What’s the difference?

That member must have been asleep at the select committee. It is the silence of the lambs over there—or the sheep, I should say. If they were allowed to speak out, they would be able to explain and endorse the proposition I am putting forward, but anyway, the silence is deafening. Can I just say that this is a key part of the bill. The Minister put forward a proposition to clarify the recall provisions. We have, I think, tested it thoroughly and robustly. I think the position that we have arrived at is one that does allow officials—and under a Labour Government they will be food safety authority officials, not officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries, with all its multitude of obligations. It will allow the food safety authority—

I move, That the question be now put.