Food Safety Law Reform Bill

Mr Chairman, it may indeed be the last opportunity I have to speak in the House, and I would just like to acknowledge both the friendship and, I guess, the commitment to Parliament of the Chairman. I would just like to say that.

The farmers’ friends have failed. The National Government is bringing into the House, in its last dying days, a piece of legislation that is so important it should have been passed at least 9 months ago, and I do not know why the Government has not given it greater priority.

This is a piece of legislation that comes off the back of a major catastrophe for the dairy industry and the food industry in this country. It was a massive mistake made by us that undermined our international reputation, and that has cost us literally hundreds of millions of dollars in the international market place, because Fonterra, for a short time—thankfully, a short time—was deemed to have sold offshore food that was dangerous and that could have been infected with botulism. As it turned out, that was not the case, thankfully, but the inability for the systems that the National Government has overseen to properly test and clear that product meant that Fonterra, rightly, took a precautionary approach and alerted the international market place. But for a couple of weeks, people thought that we were producing food that could have botulism in it, and that was absolutely disastrous for our international reputation.

There was an independent Government inquiry that went through, and a report and recommendations that came from that, and this piece of legislation is the result of that. I understand that we are debating all parts of it, and so the debate is fairly wide ranging—I appreciate that—but clearly, the Government has got a message from Crosby/Textor that it should do something to make some token commitment to its friends across the agricultural sector and to at least progress this legislation one more step.

Unfortunately, this Parliament, having overseen this terrible situation and the inquiry and the recommendations, has failed to deliver the progress that that independent Government inquiry recommended. [Interruption] Those people there, the former Minister and the chair of the Primary Production Committee—which looked at this in a non-partisan way and made a few recommendations. But, basically, we supported the legislation going through as quickly as we could because we knew the importance of it, and the Government sat on its hands and has not brought this legislation back to the House for at least 5 or 6 months. It is an outrage, and any farmer and any food producer in this country should be outraged that the Government is not going to pass this legislation before this election.

I can commit the incoming Labour Government to progressing this as quickly as possible, because there was not too much political debate at all. I think the select committee looked at the legislation carefully, asked the questions, and made some minor adjustments to improve it, but, generally, we all supported this going through as quickly as possible. But the Government did nothing. It has now waited for a new Minister to come in, and I acknowledge his efforts. He may have lobbied hard or he may have been told by Crosby/Textor: “You’d better do something here, because we’ve got to look after our mates.” Whatever the reason, it has come back into Parliament on the second to last—no, it is the last night of the parliamentary sittings of the 51st Parliament in this country.

That is an outrage, because it is not a little piece of legislation. There is a huge amount of effort that has gone into this, as I say, starting with the independent Government inquiry and a whole list of recommendations that have, effectively, been put through into this legislation, and that the Labour Party is certainly prepared to endorse and support. But why has it come back in now? Why are we going to have just a token debate—with literally 18 minutes to go for discussion—when this should have been passed long ago?

So I do not know what Fonterra, the other dairy companies, or the rest of the food industry are saying to the National Government, but they should be outraged. It is an indication of the flippant approach that this Government has taken to food safety and to biosecurity from the time it came in. Remember, this is the Government that came in in 2008 or 2009 and it chopped the biosecurity budget, ignored food safety provisions, and allowed botch-ups, one after the other, to occur, to the point where we are no longer seen as the safest producer of food in the world. I have to say that this inquiry identified some of the problems that we have had in the system.

So I am not going to speak for too much longer, other than to say that the Labour Party will progress this legislation when we get into Government on 24 September, or go into a coalition Government with our partners. I am sure that our prospective partners will endorse our position, that this is an important piece of legislation, which the National Government has sat on and not progressed, for God knows what reason, and has now brought it back in an almost—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I would just remind the ex-Minister, who has been here for quite a long time, that the Committee stage is about debating the submissions made before the select committee, asking questions of the Minister, or speaking to Supplementary Order Papers. He is doing a very good stump speech at the moment, but it is not required within this debate. If tarted up, it could look a little bit like a first, second, or third reading speech, but it sure as eggs does not look like a Committee stage contribution.

I appreciate the advice from the Chair, and it is probably the last bit he will be able to give me. Ha, ha! But I will take it on board for the wisdom that it comes with.

This piece of legislation, as I say, is significant. It amends the Animal Products Act, the Food Act, and the Wine Act—the last one of which will be of concern for all members in the House. The legislation does move to put in place a more robust and secure food safety regime. Can I put on the record that when the Labour-led Government progresses this legislation, we will be working on having an independent food safety authority, or equivalent, as we will with a biosecurity agency equivalent—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No, you cannot, really, because that does not conform to this stage of this speech, either.

—because we believe that the Government’s oversight, seen by the late reintroduction in Committee stages of this piece of legislation—that its lax approach will be changed.

We will focus on this. We will progress this legislation, and I am sorry to say that we will not have it passed before this Parliament lifts tomorrow.

Before I begin my contribution, I would also like to add my voice to those who have given their congratulations to yourself, Chairperson Borrows, and appreciation for your services, both in the Chairman’s Chair and the Speaker’s Chair, and through the Primary Production Committee, which I have very much enjoyed serving on with you and the chair of the committee and other members.

New Zealand First has supported this bill up to this point, and I do have to say now, as my colleague Mr Damien O’Connor has referenced, that in the dying stages of the 51st Parliament we are no longer supporting this bill. That is not a reflection on either the select committee process or the Minister, whom I do genuinely respect and believe has morphed—as I made mention of earlier—from being National’s attack dog to being really quite an amenable sort of a chap. I think he has been open to the representations that have been made to him.

But I reference back to a comment that my colleague Darroch Ball made in an earlier speech tonight, and also to something that Clare Curran said just before, and it is about talking to the provinces. Our initial objection to this bill—because we did initially object to some parts of it—was that it did not include country-of-origin labelling. However, when Steffan Browning managed to get his Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill drawn from the ballot, most of those objections went away.

However, since that time, and since the select committee process, we have been talking to people out in rural New Zealand, out in the provinces, out in the heartland. And like other people, we do listen to what the provinces are saying. The message that we have been getting back from those people—and partly as a result of the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ bus tour of this country, where he has been speaking to people in real New Zealand—is that we have discovered that their feelings about where this bill goes are not in line with the approach that the Government appears to be taking.

We fully understand that in the wake of the Fonterra botulism scare something did need to be done for operations of that scale, and for operations of that scale that were primarily directed towards export. But we have also become very, very cognisant of the fact that ordinary people out in middle New Zealand are very concerned about the repercussions, the effects, of legislation of this type on the ordinary activities of regular, everyday New Zealanders.

When we look at food plans as they are proposed and as they are suggested in this bill—food plans that are designed to apply to the likes of Fonterra, the likes of Synlait, the likes of the other big industrial export-orientated industries, and the fact that every stage of a process has to be subject to a specified schedule of activity and has to be tested and has to be certified—that is fine for operations of a large scale. But when we start talking about small operators—and I will refer to Biddy and her cheese, in Eketāhuna. It is people like Biddy and her cheese—the artisan producers, the creative people, the people who epitomise that innovative spirit that defines New Zealand. They are the ones who are going to suffer because of this bill, and there needs to be a clear distinction made between the approach that is taken by the Government and by the regulatory authorities to the large industrial organisations—between that and the approach that is taken to the small artisan producer, who does not export.

It is worth mentioning that Biddy’s cheese is ordered and purchased by Bellamy’s, to bring it here to Parliament when there are foreign delegations. Biddy has four cows on 10 acres near Eketāhuna, and she makes some cheese. Biddy’s turnover is about $50,000 a year, and her compliance costs under this bill are about $40,000. I am afraid that the feedback that we have had, not just from Biddy but from people out in the heartland, is that the regime that puts them all in the same basket is just not going to cut it.

I am not going to drag this process on, because this bill is not going to pass through the course of this Parliament anyway, but I do want to make the point that it is extremely important that the Government, whatever its flavour, does not lose sight of what it is that makes New Zealand New Zealand. Part of what makes New Zealand New Zealand is an appreciation of the innovative spirit of the artisans, of the creators, of the people out there in the heartland who make the primary industries what they are. For that reason, because of the impositions that this bill puts upon them, we cannot continue to support it.

I rise to speak in the Committee stage of—well, partly on the proposed amendments to—the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. We spoke at the second reading about the bill in general, and covered a lot of the aspects of it. I floated at the time that I intended to do an amendment in terms of genetically modified (GM) food labelling, and irradiated food labelling as well. There is some coverage of that in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code—standard 1.5.2 for genetically modified food, and standard 1.5.3 for irradiated food. However, there has been woeful coverage in terms of monitoring and enforcement of both of those food codes. Since 2003 there has been no monitoring or enforcement of the genetically modified foods part. So while we are getting a huge amount of genetically modified foods in, consumers cannot identify it.

Someone said: “Hey, it’s not a problem.” This is what the ministry will tell you. This is a ministry, the Ministry for Primary Industries, that has run amok. It has lost its way, and it is hard to know whom it is answering to. I do not think it is answering to the Minister, I do not think is answering to the consumers, and it is certainly not answering to the health and welfare of New Zealanders. It is just about production at any cost, it would seem.

In terms of those who may doubt the need for genetically modified foods to be labelled, first, I would say that most of them are heavily, heavily sprayed with herbicides, because they have actually been modified to be resistant to herbicides. That is the point—you spray the crop, the weeds die, and the crop survives, but it gets loaded with herbicide residues. Beyond that, and this is why I am trying to win support across this Committee—for the future, it would seem, because we have so little time to cover this as this Parliament winds up—feeding studies on laboratory animals and farm livestock have found some GM crops, including those that are being imported into New Zealand for humans and animal livestock, have toxic or allergenic effects. That could be liver and kidney toxicity; enlarged liver; disturbed liver, pancreas, or testes function—these are all separate studies—or accelerated liver ageing. There are digestive system issues. There are altered gut bacteria and intestinal abnormalities, excessive growth in the lining of the gut similar to a precancerous condition, altered blood biochemistry, and the like.

Those are the reasons that I have brought my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 355 here. It is to actually get the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries to make the changes, or to actually do what he—or she, if there is a change in the future—is meant to be doing. We need regular “monitoring and enforcement of food labelling requirements for irradiated foods and genetically modified foods.” That is the part there in my new section 4(g) of the Food Act set out in my proposed new clause 3A. I believe we have a large amount of support for this. The Government will probably be the main party lacking. The Māori Party will support it. New Zealand First will support it. Labour will support it, and, obviously, it is a Greens SOP. There are a couple of strays; we wait to see.

I want to touch on Biddy’s cheese as well. Mr Chair and members of the Primary and Production Committee will remember at our wind-up this year we enjoyed some of that cheese, and at my valedictory party we enjoyed the rest of it. It was a nice big round of cheese—

I am sorry to interrupt the member on his last call, but time has come for me to report progress to the House.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.