Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill

I move, That the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill. This bill has a simple premise: consumers want and deserve to know where their food comes from. The purpose of this bill is to enshrine in law consumers’ right to know the country from which the food they are purchasing originated so that they can make informed purchasing decisions. The purpose is for a simple mandatory labelling system in New Zealand that provides accurate information about the country of origin of single-component foods.

Single-component foods means food or food products, either packaged or unpackaged, that contain only one fruit, vegetable, meat, seafood, nut, grain, seed, or oil, although these may contain water, sugar or its substitutes, salt, or other ingredients used for preserving, colouring, and flavouring. This is a very simple, very straightforward country-of-origin labelling (COOL) bill. Country of origin means the country in which food is grown, harvested, or produced. Examples would include mangoes, beans, zucchinis, capsicum, loose Australian tomatoes, canned Italian tomatoes, frozen berries from China, nuts from the Middle East or the USA—or Canadian or Australian—bulk flour, oats, canola oil, pork, and prawns from Thailand or Australia. The list goes on and consumers want to know.

This bill will deliver choice to consumers on single-component foods such as these. Mandatory country-of-origin labelling will guarantee accurate and consistent labels, consistently applied across all food outlets and levelling the playing field rather than the variably applied voluntary system. The bill makes the standard to ensure that unscrupulous or sloppy operators do not provide consumers false or misleading information.

Ministry of Justice legal advice concludes that the bill appears to be consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The analysis pointed out that mandatory country-of-origin labelling avoids consumers assuming in the absence of such information that such food has been produced in New Zealand. It went on to say, in consideration of section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act: “This will allow consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions, which is a sufficiently important objective. The Bill extends to food products the current regime of country of manufacture labelling applying to clothing and footwear for sale. That Consumer Information Standard (Country of Origin) Regulations 1992 set out specific rules that require all new clothing or footwear for sale in New Zealand to be labelled with information that clearly states the country where the items were made or produced.”

The analysis also says: “We are satisfied that the potential limits on freedom of expression in the Bill are justified in terms of s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act as they are rationally and proportionately connected to this objective. A mandatory regime of country of origin labelling avoids retailers and manufacturers using country of origin labels as a marketing tool, displaying labels only when it is in their interests to do so and is consistent with 47 other countries (including most of New Zealand’s trading partners) that have mandatory regimes.” I note that Australian consumers have enjoyed mandatory country-of-origin labelling for a considerable time. In 2005—12 years ago—New Zealand opted out of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code that made COOL mandatory, but now, in 2017, it is well recognised that it time to give New Zealand consumers the choice they want and deserve.

In 2014 Russell McVeagh reported that a recent consumer survey found that 35 percent of New Zealanders then always or often considered a New Zealand made product first, and more than 50 percent were prepared to pay a bit more for it. In this case, they will not have to pay very much at all for it. Also in 2014, the seafood industry in a document entitled Country of origin labelling and the New Zealand seafood industry showed that most New Zealanders said they would support COOL—or country-of-origin labelling. Fifty-three percent wanted more on their labels and 42 percent wanted more country-of-origin labelling and manufacturer information.

Recently Consumer New Zealand and Horticulture New Zealand Inc. reported a poll of more than a thousand people. They found that now 71 percent of those polled wanted mandatory country-of-origin labelling and only 9 percent were opposed to it—just 9 percent were opposed. In 2007 the Green Party had a 39,000-strong petition calling for mandatory country-of-origin labelling. In another capacity, before I was here, while attending the then New Zealand Food Safety Authority’s consumer forum I recall that that very, very diverse representation of New Zealand consumers all wanted mandatory country-of-origin labelling. Clearly, they still do.

Consumer New Zealand and Horticulture New Zealand’s 2017 poll showed that seven out of 10 Kiwis want mandatory country-of-origin labelling. They say 65 percent of shoppers look for labelling information on fresh fruit, but less than a third always find it. Just 32 percent always find labelling information when they are looking for it and even fewer—just 29 percent—find it when looking at vegetables. New Zealanders deserve to know where their food comes from and they want to. They want to know. They want food they can trust. They want labels they can trust.

The New Zealand Pork Industry Board (NZPork) reports that imported pork now accounts for 60 percent of New Zealanders’ consumption of pig meat. That would be a great surprise to many New Zealanders. We do not see labels “Pork—product of Canada”, “Pork—product of Australia”, or “Pork—product of China” or wherever. We are lucky if we see some that say “Product of New Zealand”. But consumers deserve and want to know where their food comes from. NZPork’s research shows that New Zealanders expect that the meat they would buy in New Zealand is from animals born and raised here. If not, they expect to be told. We also know that New Zealanders increasingly want to be sure that meat is produced from animals whose welfare is looked after, yet imported pork does not have to meet New Zealand welfare standards.

Voluntary labelling, as partly used by the two main supermarket chains here, is not good enough, with hundreds of single-component foods not labelled and many misleading examples of country-of-origin labelling. Those are the voluntary users of country-of-origin labelling. Most other food retailers are not using it. I had an example of country-of-origin labelling on some capsicum that were labelled “Product of New Zealand or Australia or Holland”. It did not say which one. That was in one of these main channels that have been using voluntary labelling.

The need for accurate food labelling that assists consumers to make informed purchasing decisions is recognised by all major national and international food standards setting agencies, including the New Zealand Food Safety Authority, as it was back then, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, with our trans-Tasman arrangement, and the joint food and agriculture organisation, the World Health Organization’s Codex Alimentarius Commission. So way back then, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority had recognised it, along with Food Standards Australia New Zealand and Codex.

This is a very simple bill for single-ingredient foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, nuts, oils, and grains to be country-of-origin labelled. I am calling on all parties in the House to support it.

A number of firsts are going to occur in the Parliament this afternoon. First of all, I want to congratulate the member Steffan Browning on having the luck to draw a bill out of the ballot. But there are three other firsts involved. That is the best speech I have ever heard the member make in this House. The second one is that I did not ever think I would leave here agreeing with Steffan Browning. He is going to leave here before me with a bit of luck—but I am not sure about that either. The next first is that he got through his speech without mentioning Roundup, and I think that is pretty amazing, so I want to congratulate him on that as well. There is another one, which I will get on to shortly.

I think it is very interesting that the member has drawn a bill that I think, sentimentally, many people in New Zealand agree with. He outlined that in the course of his speech a moment or two ago. The National Government is going to support the first reading. There are a number of reasons for us supporting the first reading. I will get on to some of the challenges that we have with that in a little while.

First of all, I want to talk about a little bit of the background to this. The Primary Production Committee is, I guess, a pretty collegial select committee. We talk about a lot of issues outside of business hours, I suppose, for want of a better word, although the poor clerk has to listen to us quite often. This is an issue that we often talk about because one or two of the members of this Parliament managed to raise it in respect of almost everything we discuss in that select committee, and the previous member is one of those. It is an issue that I think is of interest to New Zealanders. It is of interest to a large number of our commercial grower entities. I think it is something that we will get to as we move through the select committee discussions on this bill.

I was rather intrigued with the title—the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. One could compile quite a Committee stage speech on the title, I would imagine, and no doubt someone will. It is an interesting name, and I am sure that may well get simplified in the course of this process. As Mr Browning pointed out, the bill sets out the requirements to label the country of origin of single-component foods. The interesting thing about single-component foods is that they can have additives in them, but they are additives that are basically concerned with preserving the foods and enabling those foods to be sold in a safe manner. The types of things I am talking about are salt, water, sugar, and a number of other things like that.

Making it a single-component food really plays right into the primary productive sector in New Zealand of meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts, flour, oils, etc.—all things that we grow very well in New Zealand. Many of those items are also imported into New Zealand. The two dominant supermarket chains in New Zealand currently have their own versions of country-of-origin labelling in place. Many other organisations around New Zealand do use a country-of-origin designation in the course of what they do.

It is an issue that I think is of great interest to us. It is an issue that is already used by a large number of entities and a large number of countries around the world. In New Zealand, of course, we have many of the meat companies branding their meat with the New Zealand brand. We have the dairy industry doing the same thing. The wine industry is very strongly orientated towards New Zealand—no doubt Stuart Smith will talk about that when he gets an opportunity to speak on this bill in a few moments’ time. I guess the most famous one worldwide is Scotch whisky. You can buy Scotch whisky made in other parts of the world but it is always Scotch whisky wherever it is made, provided they can get a licence to make it. That is the sort of thing that country-of-origin labelling has been used for.

This issue is often confused with the food safety issue. When Jo Goodhew gets up to speak shortly, I am sure she will have a view on that. It most certainly is not a food safety issue. I think it is an issue of interest for people and it gives people comfort to know where their food comes from. I suppose the most startling experience I have had of that is when you go to a supermarket in a place like Singapore, or even Taiwan for that matter, and you see products priced almost by country of origin. Whilst I do not think for a minute that is a trade barrier, it certainly is an advantage to some countries to have their country’s brand very firmly on the food. Country-of-origin labelling will have an impact on price; there is no doubt about that. It will have an impact on what people choose to pick off the supermarket shelf or the shelf of whatever place they choose to buy their food, but it is pretty common around the world and it is certainly very influential in many parts of the world.

The next issue I want to get on to is trade. I touched on that a moment ago. I do not think there is any way we could conceive that country-of-origin labelling is any form of trade barrier. I think that the select committee will no doubt have significant discussion on that issue, and I am sure there will be submissions on that issue to the select committee on this bill. I do not think it can be conceived as that, and it is practised in so many parts of the world that I think it is logical that it will form part of the natural process of food production and the sale of food.

I want to talk for a minute about cost, and this is the interesting thing about members’ bills when they are drawn, of course, that the Government—or Government departments—has not done a lot of research on the cost or the ramifications of the potential implementation of the conditions of these bills, so there is a lot of work to be done on this, and the select committee will obviously ask for some of this information as well. There are quite a few things that you could look at and think there might be costs involved.

The other issue that I think is really important is how you designate what qualifies to be labelled and what does not. How do you label a cabbage, for example, if it is sitting at your road gate? If you have got to package it, straight away it is adding to the cost of that cabbage. I know that is a little, frivolous issue but, none the less, we have struck that with a lot of the legislation in the food sector in New Zealand, and so we end up putting cost on the little producer and the little retail business that we otherwise might not have. That will be some work for the select committee to get through the process too.

The other area is the one of enforcement. Inevitably, there are significant costs of enforcement in anything we do in New Zealand, and there will be some costs of enforcement in this case too. I do not suppose you would ever need to go to a country-of-origin labelling process if everyone was honest, but not everyone is honest, so definitely there will be some enforcement issues. I think the other challenge for the industry will be how the labelling works and whether it needs to be consistent, and I am sure it will. Those are the sorts of things that are pretty interesting and challenging for both the Government that has to implement this legislation, if it gets through the third reading, and, certainly, the select committee as we move along.

I want to spend a moment talking about an area that provides much of the food for New Zealand and just have some empathy for the Bay of Plenty, and Edgecumbe particularly. I think that area provides a lot of food for New Zealand, and it currently has had some significant flooding issues. I, of course, come from an area—the Manawatū—that frequently floods as well. Of course, our best food-producing areas in New Zealand are all low flood plains. In fact, right round the world, wherever you look in the world, actually, the best food-producing areas are low and generally river or flood plains—always vulnerable and at risk.

That is a pretty brief summation of where I think we are at with this bill. I do want to congratulate the member on drawing a bill. He has a bit of luck from time to time. I was going to say my glass is full of Roundup, but it is not; it is only half full. But congratulations, Steffan, and I think you have done pretty well with that. The National Government will be supporting this bill in its first reading, and I look forward to the discussions we have in that select committee when the time comes. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am very pleased to rise and speak in support of this bill at its first reading, and can I also add my congratulations to Steffan Browning for bringing this bill to the House. I am really pleased that the Government will be supporting this bill and, as a fellow member of the Primary Production Committee, I am looking forward to our committee giving close consideration and examination to this bill.

In its essence, common sense, I guess, would say that this is a good bill. I guess it is one of those bills where you think: “Hey, yes, this is a good bill.” The subject matter, and also the research, has shown that Kiwis want to know where their food comes from, and they want to make an informed choice when they do make those shopping decisions or decisions as to what food they want to buy for their whānau and for their households. So I guess whilst this is about mandatory food labelling, these sorts of campaigns are not new. It is really, in a sense, about promoting New Zealand and buying Kiwi made. Those campaigns go back over a century, in terms of supporting growth and development in our regions and supporting jobs.

Indeed, Buy Kiwi Made is a campaign by Business New Zealand that still runs today. I guess this is just a subpart of that, but it is ensuring that there is mandatory labelling for our Kiwi consumers so that we do know where the origins of food are. I guess many shoppers every day, right at this moment, are in the supermarkets, at the fresh fruit aisles, making their selections—and, sure, there may be California oranges that have been voluntarily labelled by the retailer or by the supermarket as coming from the USA, but then there might be mandarins next door that are not, or, if it is the case, it may be undetectable for the actual shopper. It is those sorts of activities that go on in that retail sector that have really raised concerns, over many years, from your regular consumers and shoppers out there. And what is wrong with them knowing where their particular food, fruit, and vegetable products come from? This is a very commendable piece of legislation.

Here we are as a proud exporting nation, as mentioned by the Minister for Primary Industries today. We are a proud exporting nation, from the produce of our land and the bounty of our sea, and we want to put New Zealand all over our products, because our products are renowned worldwide as being of high quality, coming from pristine oceans and bountiful harvests. That is the branding, that is the provenance, also, of the origin of our high-quality produce that we want to sell to the world. It is somewhat ironic that here we are wanting to promote New Zealand internationally to our international markets and how proud we are of the products that we have to sell, whether it is wine, fruit, vegetables, primary produce—fish, seafood—and yet there is no requirement that our own consumers here in Aotearoa New Zealand have that information freely available to them.

I am looking forward, as I have mentioned, to giving further scrutiny to this bill. I like the fact that it is focused on single-product categories. Yes, we can get into technical arguments around ingredients and components and multi-components and value-added products and the like. We are keeping it simple. It is very clearly understandable. Fish, veges, seafood, meats, single-product categories, all of which—like McKelvie Rangitīkei lamb, Big Glory Bay king salmon and the like, and greenshell mussels. They are all wonderful produce, and I look forward to ensuring that we can promote that further through this bill. Kia ora tātou.

I am delighted to take a call on the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. Congratulations, Steffan Browning. I am pleased this has been drawn out of the ballot, and I understand New Zealanders’ desire to know where their food comes from. But I want to cover off a few things here today, and I think it is really important that we continue to remember that this bill is about choice, so that consumers can easily find out where the product they are buying comes from. There has been a lot of demand for that and a lot of discussion around that for quite some time, but there are also some misapprehensions around that.

First of all, we thought that voluntary labelling and the fact that 80 percent of the retail food market—that being Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs—were doing it voluntarily would get us across the line and have enough New Zealanders knowing what they wanted to know. As it turned out, that proved to be not quite enough.

I want to say that there are two reasons that people think this is going to be good for New Zealand. First of all, New Zealand producers of food think this is going to give them a competitive advantage. If they pretend they do not, that is wrong. They think that New Zealanders want to buy New Zealand products, and largely they do. But New Zealand products, or any products—fresh fruit and vegetables—are price sensitive as well.

I myself was thinking the other day, when I saw a particular fruit—I think it was lemons—in the supermarket, and I wanted a lemon for my gin and tonic, that in fact I did not think the difference in taste was important enough for me to buy the product that was twice the price, just because it came from somewhere in New Zealand. So I am sorry but I bought a lemon from overseas. However, I did have the choice, and that is what we are saying New Zealanders should have now—that is the choice.

The second problem we have is that New Zealanders believe that this will give them a choice that will assure them of food safety—wrong, wrong, wrong. It will not. There are many other mechanisms to assure New Zealanders of food safety, and they do not always work. We saw, a few years ago, New Zealanders getting sick from New Zealand produced vegetables. We saw, a couple of years ago, New Zealanders getting sick with hepatitis A from eating frozen berries. At the time, 95 percent of New Zealand’s frozen berries in supermarkets were labelled with country of origin. That was done voluntarily. It did not stop anybody getting sick though, did it?

I want to cover off another couple of things. The survey showed us that a good representation of New Zealanders want this. I believe it was Horticulture New Zealand and Consumer New Zealand that put together a good survey that gave us a clear steer, and that has helped us to make up our minds that this is a good way to go.

However, in the select committee we need to make sure that this bill is simple and it is as cost-effective for the producers as is possible. The reason I say that is if we look across the Ditch to Australia, where they have a country-of-origin labelling scheme that is anything but, the last thing we want to do is go down the path that they have. All the Australians have decided to do is label what percentage of the product is Australian-made. If it is 50 percent Australian-made, that is what the label says. If it is 50 percent a New Zealand product, it does not say that.

They are not getting anything on their label other than how much of it is Australian-made and that, to me, is a fraud. Personally, I think it is also a barrier to trade. So that will be an interesting one to watch over the years to come, and it has just been very recently introduced.

If we look across the country, the people supporting this are shoppers, in the main. It is New Zealand producers of the single-ingredient products. It is rural New Zealand, largely. But there is some sensitivity around the companies that will have to do the labelling, and about how easily their product will be labelled. We know that if it is in a packet, labelling it is a whole lot easier than if it is an apple rolling around and we have to make sure that every single one of them has got a sticker on it.

However, I think these things are not insurmountable. It is my view that what we are doing here today is putting in place a process, through a select committee, where the bill can be carefully looked at. We can minimise the costs to the producers. We can give New Zealanders the information they want, but they must remember that when they are choosing food there are other ways that they can be more assured of its safety—looking at its best-before date, making sure they store it appropriately, and preparing it properly for eating. That will be much more about food safety; this is about choice and knowing what you are buying. Thank you.

I am very pleased to rise and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in this first reading of the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I was watching the previous bill unfolding when Mr Mallard was in the chair, and I saw him make a point of advising members that they should not be reading their speeches. That being the case, I was not going to prepare very much. Seeing that your perhaps-slightly-more-tolerant self is in the chair now, I wonder whether that might not have been the best idea. However, having listened to speeches from the Government side, I am glad that I did not, because I have kind of changed tack with where I was going on this.

The first thing I want to do is congratulate Mr Browning on having his bill drawn and on bringing it to the House at this most appropriate time. I have got a lot of time for Steffan Browning, whom I am on the Primary Production Committee with. I think he is one of the few remaining true Greens in a party that is drifting more and more to the political left and becoming less environmental in focus. It seems that the old-time environmentalists are moving on and a new generation is coming in, so it would be very nice for this bill to pass through the House, pass into law, and become perhaps something of a legacy for Steffan Browning as, we could say, a “true Green”.

We were talking about this yesterday with a number of colleagues and were wondering whether the bill would, in fact, have the support to pass in the House assuming that National would not be supporting it. When we got a whisper that National was going to support the bill at first reading, being a suspicious-minded character, I started to wonder why. A couple of the things that have been said during Mr McKelvie’s speech, and also during Jo Goodhew’s speech, have given me cause to suspect that I know what is going to happen with this.

The first thing I want to say is that I want to refute the claims that both the affable chairman and the former Minister have made regarding food safety. This is absolutely a food safety issue. You can dress it up as choice if you like, and choice is part of it, but that choice is about food safety. Ian McKelvie said that knowing where food has come from serves as a comforter for some people. Well, yes, they have the comfort of knowing that the food they are buying is safe because it is from somewhere that can be trusted. Personally, I do not knowingly buy food that comes from some countries in the world, because I do not trust their standards or I do not particularly like their welfare standards that they apply to animals, and so forth. We all know that there are countries in the world that use chemicals and procedures and so forth in food production that we simply would not allow here.

My suspicious mind carried on down that track. When Jo Goodhew mentioned the Australian model and the select committee and that we have to make sure that the bill is simple and cost effective, I was pretty much confirmed in my thinking that National has decided to support this bill so that it can water it down and turn it into something that it was not meant to be.

From my point of view—from New Zealand First’s point of view—Steffan’s bill probably does not actually go far enough. We would like all food to be labelled, and we would like technology to be made use of so that there are QR codes and so forth on packaging that can tell the entire history of a food, be it manufactured food or processed food. There are possibilities now, with online information, where a consumer can have access to all the background information about a food—where it is processed, what the ingredients are, and so forth. It does not all have to be written on the label; there are ways in which that information can be accessed.

We would, of course, like to see this country-of-origin food bill extended very much in scope not simply to include fresh produce and single-food products but to cover off everything else as well. But I think it is very important that, here and now, we flag a concern that this bill is going to reach the select committee and then perhaps go through a watering-down process, pretty much as the National Government did with ACT’s three-strikes bill, which would have been quite good had it gone through in the format that was originally proposed. It ended up being some sort of wishy-washy shadow that then enabled the National Government to say that it had addressed the issue. I suspect very much that that is going to be the case here. The Government is going to say that it supported this bill, that it became law, and “Look, we have addressed country-of-origin labelling.”, and, in fact, we are going to end up we something that does not actually provide the consumer with the information, the choice, and the reassurance that they deserve and that they need. But we will see.

I look forward to this bill going through the Primary Production Committee. I look forward to the submissions. I very much hope that I am wrong about the possibility of the bill being watered down, but we shall see. On that note, I congratulate the member again, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Can I begin by congratulating my colleague Steffan Browning, who is one of my constituents. He is from the great electorate of Kaikōura, and lives in Marlborough—is based in Marlborough. But I think, Steffan—who has decided not to run at the next election—it is a really fitting note for you to go out on, to have a bill in your name drawn. This far out from the election, it will go quite a long way through the process, hopefully, before you leave. I know that you are very passionate about these issues.

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak in favour of this bill. I support the bill not only because National is supporting it; I support it because I believe in it myself. I think it is a fantastic piece of potential legislation. I look forward to taking it to the select committee, where there will no doubt be some debate, but it is certainly not the aim for it to be a watering-down. No doubt we will have to ensure that the thing works, and that is what the whole process of the select committee is for. I think that you will no doubt have a lot of input there, Steffan. I am looking forward to it. We might even knock Mr Prosser into shape and get him sorted out as well at the same time, but—

💬 Tim Macindoe: You’re in for the long haul there.

Yeah. Well, I think—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying just before dinner, the wine industry is a great case in point where country-of-origin labelling is used, in a mandatory sense, in almost every market in the world where wine is sold. Despite what many think, it has not had any impact on local producers when export products go into those other markets. In fact, I would argue that having that opportunity and that choice is really just giving the consumer the information they need to make a decision—not necessarily to be parochial about their own home-grown products, but merely to make a decision based on their own tastes.

I think a lot of this goes back to—it is in our DNA, really. We grew up and evolved growing our own food and having a link to it. In villages, the groups got together—perhaps not all the individuals who were involved in growing the food, but they had a very close connection to it. Now we have evolved, through the industrial age, to where most of us have little or nothing to do with the production of the food that we eat. Very seldom, if ever, do we set foot on a farm, an orchard, or, indeed, into a vegetable patch of the commercial variety from where our food comes. I think it really just comes right back to that innate feeling that we have: we want to know where our food comes from. We want to make those decisions based on those views. I think it is really important that this bill comes forward and deals with that.

As I said earlier, there will be some things that we will maybe want the rough edges taken off of, but that is in the spirit of this bill. It will be only to enhance the bill and make it better than it would have been otherwise. I do not believe it is anything to do with a trade barrier at all. In terms of cost, I know officials will always find reasons why things could not and should not be done, but in actual fact this is what consumers want. Everybody agrees with that. I do not think there is any issue there at all.

I note that the promoter of the bill, Steffan Browning, said it is a simple bill, and that may well be right when compared with many of the other bills that come before this House that are very, very complicated. But it gets right to the heart of the matter of what needs to be done and what needs to be covered for consumers’ rights. It is only for single-variety foods, and that is for a really sensible reason, I think. To go to the next step, you then get into really complicated territory. I think the member really recognised that early on and thought “You know, after all, politics is the art of the possible, isn’t it, so let’s get this bill through the House and see how it works, and then think about other things later on down the track.”, and I commend the member for that.

I remember the last time I spoke to Horticulture New Zealand’s chief executive, Mike Chapman, who was very keen to tell me about the results of the poll that they did, and I think that was alluded to by previous speakers. I think industries like that will be very delighted to see this bill before the House.

I would like to circle back and just say, once again, good on Steffan Browning for having the luck to have this pulled out of the ballot. It is also a great swansong for the member. It is with that that I would like to commend this bill to the House.

💬 Michael Wood: Mr Deputy Speaker.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Mr Deputy Speaker.

The Hon Damien O’Connor.

Age before beauty—sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have to congratulate Steffan Browning, I guess, on having persistence, determination, and a little bit of luck. He has in the House a bill and an issue that he has been passionate about for a long time.

Labour will support the bill, as acknowledged by our earlier speaker, Rino Tirikatene. Labour in Government had a request from the Greens to support country-of-origin labelling and we turned it down at that time because it included a whole lot of issues that were actually complications around trade negotiations at that point and Labour could not support that. But since 2011, Labour has always advocated for country-of-origin labelling simply because it is sensible, and National—I have to acknowledge its wisdom, even though it comes very rarely and very late—has decided to support the bill because there is an issue of choice.

Although the previous Minister for Food Safety, Jo Goodhew, got up and said that this is nothing to do with food safety, I would disagree. What it is about is consumers’ knowledge and about letting them make the calls. At the heart of that issue is the one of where food is produced and the integrity and credibility of the systems that produce that food.

In New Zealand we have just passed the Food Act and we have very, very high standards. In fact, some would say that they are a bit excessive and over the top, particularly for the small producer. But we have very high standards, and I think New Zealanders—rightfully—can trust the systems that we have, and people who buy our food around the world should be able to trust the systems of food production in New Zealand.

I am not going to pick on countries, but I can tell you it is not the same elsewhere in the world. Whether it is horse meat in the EU, whether it is kangaroo meat in Australia, or whether it is melamine in China, we have got numerous examples of where there have been systems that have not delivered to the consumer the food that they believed they were buying. So it might not always be a food safety issue. I am sure eating good quality kangaroo meat is not unsafe, but it is not what the consumer purchased, and if you buy a product from New Zealand, then you should know that it has been produced in the best-possible way by the best-possible people.

We, in fact, have no other option. We are no longer the lowest-cost producers of food in the world. We were quite proud of that. We are no longer the lowest-cost producers. We have got high land values. We have got technology creeping in. We have got wages that actually should be a little bit higher, I would have to say, but they are certainly higher than many of our competitors, and that is how it should be. They are not going to go down, and they should not. So the cost of production will continue to climb.

We have to be the Rolex watch producers of protein in the world. People have to be prepared to pay a premium for our products, and when we do not have a country-of-origin labelling system in our domestic market, people offshore say: “What are you doing? How could it be so ridiculous that you claim to be the best in the world, yet you’re not proud to stamp and brand your own products in your own country?”.

You know, this is not new. In fact, we currently have no country-of-origin labelling, because we have an exemption from Food Standards Australia New Zealand—an exemption so that we do not have to have compulsory country-of-origin labelling. This will just be bringing us into line with Australia. There are technical issues to ensure that what we put in place will indeed work for consumers and work for producers, and I am sure that the select committee will go through that very, very carefully.

Horticulture New Zealand and Consumer New Zealand—they all support this. They know we need it. Canada had country-of-origin labelling in 1990, the United States had it in 2002, and Australia, the European Union, India, China, Japan, and Russia have all got it, and yet a country that prides itself on safe food production does not have country-of-origin labelling.

The National Government and the National Ministers for Food Safety have rejected the calls, time and time again, for us to put it in place. Well, Steffan Browning has snookered the Government, and good on you, Steffan. It is absolutely snookered between public opinion—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but his time has long expired.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: I didn’t have a bell.

You had a bell at 1 minute.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Did I have a bell? My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Before I start, I think it is a bit ironic that Mr O’Connor is putting blame on National Ministers of food safety and primary industries for not supporting this bill given that, in his opening statement, he said that successive Labour Ministers never supported it.

I just wanted to speak in support of this bill and acknowledge Steffan Browning for bringing it to the House, because I know one thing for sure: he has been a passionate supporter of this ever since I have been in Parliament, which is, obviously, a relatively little period of time compared with him. Sitting on the Primary Production Committee with him, there have been a number of opportunities, through bills and through presentations that have come before the committee, where he has continuously and relentlessly raised this issue with our sector representatives.

Actually, I think the most meaningful one of late was on wine country-of-origin labelling, which our committee looked at, probably about 6 or 7 months ago. There were quite a few submitters on that bill who raised the issue that he is pushing here today. I think it is a good thing. Obviously, I do not have the same level of trade background that Stuart and other speakers in the House have got, but I think that looking at all the information around it—and looking at the presenters who were before us on the Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill, about 6 or 7 months ago, who were confident that this was not going to be an inhibitor to our trading relationships—gives me the confidence to support this bill. Indeed, it is what gives our party confidence in supporting this bill.

One of the things that I think the select committee process gives an opportunity to tease out is the nuances associated with that. Obviously, there are a number of trade agreement refreshes that are going on at the moment, and new agreements, and, indeed, a number of existing agreements that we have with other countries. I am sure—and I have no doubt given the amount of proactive engagement we get from sector leads and ministry officials within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—that if there will be any unforeseen consequences on trading relationships as result of this, that they will certainly be aired through the select committee process, which is why I think we have a high level of confidence in supporting it to the select committee.

There are probably not too many bills that progress through the parliamentary process and get past the select committee without having some form of alteration made to them. Obviously, there are a few rough edges—as has been pointed out by some people on our side in previous speeches—that will need to be ironed out, but that is no different to any other piece of legislation that goes through a select committee. I know that Steffan Browning is a pragmatic member and that he will be very accommodating to the views that are put forward by ministry officials and other sector representatives along those lines—as he always is.

I want to pick up on a point that Damien O’Connor raised as well in his opening statements, and that is around the need—and, indeed, the requirement—and, actually, the realistic nature of consumers in the 21st century being more curious and being more informed and requiring more information about the produce that they are purchasing for themselves and their families. If you look at China, probably, as an example at an international level, and the high degree of curiosity and rigour that it puts around doing its due diligence on products that it is feeding its children through infant formula. I think there is certainly an obligation on consumers to remain—vigilant is not the right word, but I suppose it is a good way to describe not just always not resting on your laurels when you are purchasing products from, well, New Zealand, and also from other countries, and just make sure that you are aware of the produce and that which goes into making those products.

I think one of the things that this bill does is it does not take away from that, and it does not put country-of-origin labelling into the food safety category, but what it does is just reinforce the view that consumers are curious and they are inherently more interested in what goes into making up their products. On that level, I think Steffan raised something that is, obviously, demanded by consumers in this day and age. It is a real pleasure to be able to support it, and I want to congratulate Steffan because I know this is one the handful of issues that he has been quite passionate about over his time in Parliament, and, no doubt—

💬 Ian McKelvie: Along with Roundup.

Roundup up is probably not going to be featured in this, but, nevertheless, I have no hesitation that it will be raised in the Primary Production Committee tomorrow. I just want to congratulate him on getting the bill to this point. Thank you.

The Labour Party is very enthusiastic about this bill, as you can tell. I am very pleased to stand and speak in favour of the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I am pleased to reaffirm the support from the Labour Party for this bill. I am very happy to congratulate Steffan Browning on putting forward a bill that is very simple and achieves, I think, a very good objective. I am acknowledging of the National Party, which has shown willingness to progress this bill in line with those principles. And I am very pleased indeed to stand as the Labour Party’s consumer affairs spokesperson in support of this bill as well.

This is a concept that the Labour Party has supported for a long time. It has been on our policy book since 2011. Sometimes good things do take time, and we are quite open to other parties picking up good ideas and marching in concert with them. This bill is a good bill because it is about giving our consumers real choice. The thing about real choice in any sphere—this is a matter of common sense and it is also a basic foundation of economic theory as well—is that you cannot have real choice unless you have good information, otherwise how are you making a choice?

In respect of this issue, we can think about a couple of barrels of apples at the supermarket. You can choose whether you want the green ones or the red ones. As a consumer you can perceive that information and make your choice. You can make a choice based on the taste that you know comes with the different varieties and that kind of thing. But how do you make a choice about the country of origin unless you are provided with that information at the point of purchase? The fact is that you simply cannot.

This bill very simply attempts to deal with that issue, and it says in the purpose of the bill that it is about providing a “simple, mandatory labelling system in New Zealand that provides consumers with accurate information about the country of origin of single component foods to enable them to make informed food purchasing decisions.” A couple of important things within that—of course, there is the reference to single-component food. We could, of course, go wider with this issue if we wished to, as a House. But I think Mr Browning has quite correctly said “Let’s start with something that is relatively simple.”, which is single-component food; not things that have multiple components where you can have difficulties and issues in terms of identifying where those different components have come from. I think that is a simple and pragmatic basis to go from.

There are a couple of other reasons I think that we should be moving forward in support of this bill. One is that a lot of industry players are already there. In fact, there is an increasing movement towards providing consumers with this kind of information. Why is that? It is because, I think, a lot of producers and a lot of distributors want their consumers to be able to make good choices. If you are looking at it from the perspective of New Zealand producers, I can only see this being a good thing, because while this bill does not push on anyone that they have to buy New Zealand products, it gives them that information. And I think there are a lot of New Zealanders out there who, if they are given good information and the option of choosing between similar products from New Zealand and from offshore, will look at the New Zealand option very, very seriously indeed.

At the moment the information is really poor. I think about some supermarkets you go to, where there are not good practices, and you get these ridiculous signs that say “Product of either Australia or New Zealand.”, or some such. What information does that give people? I am sort of thinking about that in the political context. It would be like the equivalent of if we woke up on the morning of 24 September and the press said that we have elected either a Labour-led or a National-led Government. Or, in the case of Epsom, we have elected either Paul Goldsmith or David Seymour. Imagine the panic that would sow in the National Party ranks. People want clear information. That is all that this is about.

The bill is supported by Consumer New Zealand. It has moved on this issue over the years. It is also supported by Horticulture New Zealand. It notes in its research that 70 percent of New Zealanders are very, very supportive of this concept. I think one that we can say is there are some issues we want to look at in select committee. There are questions around enforcement and penalties, costs—I do not think the costs are going to be a big issue; increasingly, we have got good technology and good distribution networks that, I think, can absorb the costs pretty well, but that needs to be looked at—the types of display that would be sufficient, and also the definition of different types of food. I know when the Labour Party went down the track of looking at GST exemption on different types of foods, it can open up some questions. But that is something that we can explore sensibly in select committee.

In conclusion, I can reaffirm that Labour is very keen to see this bill progress, certainly to select committee and, I think, probably beyond that. It is simply about providing Kiwi consumers with the information that they need to make good choices. I do not see any strong arguments against that. I commend Mr Browning on putting forward the bill, and commend it to other colleagues in the House. Thank you.

I am pleased to take this call on the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill in the name of our Green colleague Steffan Browning. I think it is always a very proud moment when you can have a bill drawn from the ballot. There is great luck in that, but I think it is also a great moment to be able to, obviously, pursue an area of interest, and I know from the few times that I have sat in the Primary Production Committee that the member is very passionate about that sector. I am sure that the chair of the committee would have many comments to say on that. Again, I acknowledge the member for his bill. As has already been noted by this side of the House, the National Government is supporting this bill to a select committee.

From my side, I would not see this as one of the most pressing issues in the country, and I say that only from a constituency point of view. This is not something I get a lot of queries about, but the paradox within that is, I am sure, actually, a number of my constituents would welcome this. It is one of those elements that they probably do not even think about.

I think it is in the purposes of the bill where Mr Browning talks about the fact that people will assume, in many ways, if it is not labelled that it is already a New Zealand product. So at the heart of this bill is a question of knowledge. I am mentioning that because this is about knowledge, not safety, and I think that is a relatively important element to draw out. Others may have done so in the debate, and we would welcome hearing from the member. But, ultimately, what this bill is seeking to do is to provide a little bit more knowledge for New Zealand consumers to better understand where the product they are about to eat comes from.

It is not fundamentally a safety issue, and I think it is probably important for people at home to understand this. The safety of food is already covered by existing legislation. I think it was in 2014 that a food safety Act—or an update, effectively—was passed, and I think again, for those at home and perhaps for the House, there should be that understanding that the safety of our food, regardless of country of origin, is already checked, mandated, and controlled via Governmental legislation. So what this is going to do is, yes, provide a little bit more opportunity to understand where, effectively, our food comes from.

Importantly, this is about single-component foods. You are allowed—sorry, I will just quickly make a distinction. By “single-component”, we are obviously thinking of the likes of fish and meat and fruit. It does not preclude it if, I think, some—I assume—basic preservatives like salt or the like are put in. That does not exclude it, but we are talking very basic products here. But, as with the previous speaker, Michael Wood, I think it needs the select committee to take a bit of time to tease out some of these issues.

In my initial looking over of the bill, there is a little bit of concern—and it is only on my own side—about the level of fines that would be imposed. I would be particularly interested to see how they marry up against other sorts of enforcement activities, particularly in this space. I do think we need to look at any cost that this might have on consumers indirectly, because in the first instance it will be the importer—the likes of a supermarket, for example—that will wear the cost.

Importantly, of course, a number of our supermarkets already have a voluntary system where they are marking out the country of origin, so in some ways that is probably an argument that this will not be a hefty cost, because it is already happening. I suppose it then becomes an issue for some of the smaller producers—how is that going to look? The other element, too, will be simply: how is this going to be displayed? I suspect it is not going to be a massive issue, and I think of fruit in the supermarket. It is not unusual, and almost annoying, I have to say, that almost every piece of fruit has to be navigated with a little sticker. It might be fine on a banana; rather frustrating when it is an apple. But, actually, how is that going to look? Again, how is it going to be mandated? What is going to be the consistent approach there? I think that is why, certainly from this side of the House, we are happy to see the bill progress.

We assume—with the support of the House it will get through—there will be a chance for the select committee to, importantly, hear from the various groups. I come to the conclusion of my little contribution tonight, encouraging those groups that have an interest here to come and speak to the committee to allow it to further formulate—I was going to say “better formulate”, but that is a little bit presumptuous—the bill. I have every confidence that the member responsible for the bill will welcome that opportunity.

I think, finally, we will just need a little bit of guidance, which will probably come from the officials in the first instance, around our World Trade Organization obligations to make sure we are in a good space there. But, again, I commend the member for bringing the bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am delighted that National has indicated it has had a change of heart and will support this bill through to a select committee. This is going to be exceptionally well appreciated by many New Zealanders, going on the back of when Labour came on in 2011, and I think of the comment back then by Sue Kedgley, who said that there were 9 years of campaigning to get to that point. As I noted in my earlier speech, there has been a consistently greater level of desire to have country-of-origin labelling, and now to have most parties in the House agreeing to this is fantastic.

New Zealanders do have a right to know where their food comes from and to make an informed choice when they buy. They do want the option of choosing locally produced food when they do their weekly shop, and we now have this opportunity to make that a reality. At the select committee it sounds like we all are—and I certainly am—looking forward to hearing from submitters their different angles and positions and how far they want us to go with this.

I would like to thank the likes of Horticulture New Zealand. It has got 5,500 members and it is clearly very, very supportive of this bill. Consumer New Zealand, a very respected consumer organisation with a very large membership, is right behind this bill. New Zealand pork is a classic example of a sector that is currently heavily influenced—60 percent of pork consumed in New Zealand is imported, and yet that pork, as far as I know, is never labelled with the country of origin. So that will make a great move for New Zealand pork. TomatoesNZ is supportive and is part of the campaigning on these sorts of issues, and it would also be benefited. The Soil & Health Association of New Zealand has lobbied long—in fact, I was with it before I was here, lobbying on this issue. The New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women, the E tū union—they are all supporters, so you can see it has got a wide, wide level of support. Sue Kedgley, in 2007, had a 39,000-strong petition.

But tonight I do want to once again thank the parties supporting this bill: the Māori Party, New Zealand First, Labour, and National. People will be very, very happy.

💬 Tim Macindoe: What about the Greens?

The Greens are definitely supporting this. They have done so for ever—ha, ha! The Greens have supported this for ever.

I would like to also put out a thought about the people of Edgecumbe and, obviously, other areas of New Zealand tonight and over the next few days around flooding. The chair of the Primary Production Committee, Ian McKelvie, brought that up earlier, and how accurate he was in saying that most food produced in New Zealand that will be affected by this, or lots of it, is on those low lands, those flood plains. We do need to consider those producers. Quite often people in the urban areas just do not appreciate how hard it is to produce food and get good returns. This bill, thankfully, will give New Zealanders the choice to support those New Zealand producers, who do so often have to battle the elements.

There are a number of issues that have been brought up by colleagues in the House here, including labelling and whether it is a food safety issue. I can say that, in my view, it is in part a food safety issue, so I would hate to miss out the word. But as I round up this speech—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

—just to give a little bit of Roundup to my friends over there. Roundup will come into it with some of the imported food, too. So I look forward to the select committee process and I thank everyone again for the level of support that I have heard tonight. I look forward to the select committee process. Thank you.