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 third time.

Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. So I’ve been a vegetarian my entire adult life, and this year I found myself in the odd situation of going through supermarket chillers, rifling through packs of bacon, looking at the labels. Looking at all of those labels, what I’ve discovered is it’s impossible.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh, come back to our side. Come back to the good side.

It’s impossible. I’m a committed vegetarian. No amount of bacon cooking will persuade me. But anyway, what I want for those people who do eat bacon is that when they look at the labels they can work out where that bacon comes from, because the fact is when you look at bacon or pork or a whole bunch of other products in New Zealand it says “Made from local and imported ingredients.” Given that 85 percent of New Zealand bacon is imported, 95 percent of that is from countries with terrible, much worse animal welfare standards, our consumers are none the wiser. And it’s not just a problem with bacon; it’s a problem with all of our foods. It’s a problem with our food labelling laws, and that’s what we’re here to fix tonight.

Now, people care about where their food comes from for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s labour conditions; maybe it’s for ethical reasons; maybe it’s to avoid antibiotics, pesticides, or genetic engineering. No matter the reason, I believe consumers have the right to know where their food comes from. They don’t even need a reason. Maybe they just want to know where their food comes from. The problem is you can’t exercise your consumer power if you don’t have the information provided. So 55 other countries around the world already have country-of-origin food labelling, including the US, the UK, and Canada. Australia has a comprehensive regime that even indicates the percentage of Australian-grown products within the food. Now, I would have preferred New Zealand to be the first country to introduce this, but we will be, hopefully, after tonight the 56th. We’ve required country-of-origin labelling on footwear and clothing since 1992 but not for food. Opinion polls have shown Kiwi consumers overwhelmingly want to know where their food comes from.

Now, the Green Party’s long been a champion for country-of-origin food labelling, and we have many of those champions in the House tonight. I want to acknowledge the longstanding advocacy of former Green MP Sue Kedgley and former Green MP Steffan Browning. These are two tireless champions for food safety, for food quality, for organics, for regenerative agriculture, and for animal welfare. It’s taken 16 years, multiple MPs, two select committee hearings, a select committee inquiry, a massive petition of 36,000 people led by Sue Kedgley, but I guess you could say sometimes good things take time. I think you could also say Green Party members are sometimes out in front and we’re ahead of the times. A lot of other groups have worked to get to this point, and I’d like to really single out Consumer New Zealand, Horticulture New Zealand, New Zealand Pork, and many others.

The bill passed its first reading—it was shepherded by Steffan Browning—and it went to the Primary Production Committee. It then went through two tranches of submissions, and I’d like to thank everyone. There were hundreds and hundreds of people and multiple groups who made a submission. I want to thank them. I want to thank the members of the select committee, including the chair, David Bennett, for their constructive engagement.

Going through the submission and consideration process it was clear some amendment to the legislation was needed to make the bill more workable and to achieve cross-party support. For example, rather than the original stand-alone Act how it was drafted, it was amended so that food labelling could be achieved through the existing Fair Trading Act. This was to avoid the confusion of having multiple regimes and requirements spread across different Acts, but it also is quite useful in the sense that it gives an existing regime to include or exclude a penalties regime and a regulation-making regime.

Now, in the select committee we heard some legal red herrings raised by some large corporate submitters. They would say that the risk was that country-of-food origin labelling would somehow breach our international obligations, disregarding the fact that many of our international trading partners have this. Now, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade came to the select committee and advised that it is possible to draft and propose the regime in such a way that it’s consistent with our international obligations. At this point, can I thank the officials who advised the committee.

Now, personally, I think the trade concerns were less about the legality and more about a campaign from some food producers to try and persuade other countries to weaken their labelling laws. Can I respectfully suggest to Fonterra, Federated Farmers, and Beef and Lamb, a more profitable food future for New Zealand producers is embracing our New Zealandness, highlighting our national food story, because we’ve got a fantastic story, rather than hoping to weaken other countries’ labelling regimes to export bland commodities.

Now, the biggest question the committee faced was whether it would bring home the bacon and include bacon in the legislation after being disregarded. Given, as I said, 85 percent of our pork products come from overseas, 95 percent of that with terrible animal welfare standards, it’s been odd for me as a vegetarian to be advocating for New Zealand Pork. It probably killed my vegetarian street-cred that New Zealand Pork put a press release out saying they thanked me for my advocacy. But I genuinely believe that if Kiwi consumers want to avoid poor animal welfare standards—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Just try it, man. Just try it. It’s fantastic.

—they should be able to have the information—ha, ha! I’m sure it’s fantastic. I know it’s fantastic. It’s not the taste. I’m not eating it. I’m grateful that the committee did listen to the advocacy of groups such as New Zealand Pork and the overwhelming majority of submitters, and bacon was included. I thank the National Party in particular for that inclusion.

The original bill covered all single-component foods and was amended by the Primary Production Committee to only include “single-ingredient minimally processed foods”. The rationale for this was the committee wanted a scheme that was simple to implement, with the least cost, and to avoid confusion around definition. That’s why they proposed it be for fresh, frozen, unprocessed, minimally processed—for example, minced, cut or filleted. In some respects the bill was improved. But I believe by limiting the scope of foods covered it might disappoint some Kiwi consumers and confuse them about why some products are in and others aren’t. For example, it means that dried, cured, and pickled foods are out; nuts, grains, and seeds are not explicitly in at this point. I think people out shopping will be wondering why tomatoes are in but canned tomatoes are out; fruits are in but nuts are out; a cucumber’s in but a pickle’s out.

The line had to be drawn somewhere and the committee drew it there, but I hope over time the list of foods can be expanded so we can get closer to the Australian comprehensive regime. But still this bill acts as a great first step, a flexible first step, and a foundation for which further foods can be added through regulations in the Fair Trading Act. The ball’s now in the court of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, and he’ll start the process of consulting on the regulations under section 27 of the Fair Trading Act to set an information disclosure standard for country of origin of food. I hope this can happen as soon as practicable, and the legislation directs that it has to happen within 18 months. I hope he can take an expansive as possible approach to which foods require labelling. I’d like to also now take the opportunity to thank the Ministers Faafoi and O’Connor for their very positive approach and engagement throughout this process.

Now, the question for the country is what’s next for food labelling? I hope we can take this as a first step and maybe start to have the conversation about palm oil, whether that should be labelled—whether we should be modernising the dietary labelling information on labels. For fizzy drinks, why on earth don’t we have the number of teaspoons of sugar which are in a bottle of fizzy drink? But that’s for the future, and tonight this is about celebrating the passing of this legislation with the vast majority of support of Parliament—fingers crossed.

Thank you very much to everyone who’s made this possible: Labour, New Zealand First, and National. Passing this bill is a very positive first step, and it does give consumers more information power. It aligns us with other countries. The cost is likely to be absolutely miniscule for consumers, given that labels are changed all the time. It’s a great foundation for the Government to build on, and adding foods through the Fair Trading Act regulations means many more can be included.

I want to make sure that when those Kiwi consumers—if they’re in the bacon chiller at the supermarket or anywhere looking at a label—want to know where the food comes from, they’ll be able to get that information. I want to make sure that Kiwis have consumer power. We’ve got some of the best food in the world and such a great national story. We should be sharing it. Why on earth would we want to hide that away? Thank you very much to the parties for their support. Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I want to acknowledge Gareth Hughes and his contribution in the House this evening. I also want to acknowledge Steffan Browning, who brought the bill in and got it past its first reading in—when was that? That was way back in April 2017.

For us in the National Government at the time, that required quite a bit of soul-searching over whether we wanted to support the bill to the select committee. We did indeed vote for it in April to send it off to the select committee, and I remember at the time being briefed by Ian McKelvie, who was chair of the Primary Production Committee, and who was saying that this bill was pretty much a dog, the way it was originally drafted, and it needed a lot of resuscitation to get it to where it is today. About 400 people submitted on the original bill, and it wasn’t until we got the officials in front of the select committee—according to Mr McKelvie—that they realised that this bill was indeed a problem because with the way it was designed, it was indeed towards a single Act.

So what happened then was the committee decided to, effectively, gut the bill, and that’s covered in the bill. It talks about recommending that all provisions in the bill be deleted excluding the title, commencement, and purpose clauses. Indeed, the bill required a huge amount of panel beating, but—to give some positivity to the debate this evening—it was important that that did happen.

So then it got to the point of, effectively, being redrafted and put back out for further submissions, and we got almost another 400 submissions—386. There were a lot of consumers concerned about it and wanting to know where their food does come from, and the focus on the bill that we are debating this evening—and it looks likely that it will pass this evening—is more on the Fair Trading Act. It gives the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the ability to regulate to set these country-of-origin food regulations exactly under that Act. So the Minister, in time, could choose to set more food ingredients—single ingredients—through the regulations. At the moment, it is very focused on single ingredients that are fresh or frozen or, indeed, unprocessed, or minimally processed—what I mean by that is cut, filleted, or minced.

Like Gareth Hughes, I go to the supermarket and do quite a bit of shopping. Normally, I get given a list by my wife, and I spend a lot of time at the meat part of the supermarket—unlike Gareth Hughes. Yes, I heard the comments of New Zealand Pork in the select committee, and I understand that, potentially, there’s an advantage for New Zealand pork producers—knowing that a huge amount of our pork comes from overseas countries—so I get the fact that consumers want to know where their food comes from.

There’s a very important point: this bill is not about food safety; it’s about the origin of food and where that particular food comes from around the world. We shouldn’t cloud the fact that this bill is not focused on food safety, because New Zealand has world-leading food safety standards. They were strengthened when, indeed, we had the whey protein concentrate issue with Fonterra, which was a false alarm. So the food safety Act was strengthened as a result of that, and we should be proud of the fact that New Zealand produces premium food products that are exported to around 130 countries around the world.

So, in summary, we support the bill. It took a lot of work for the select committee to get comfort as to producing a bill that was simple and that was practical so that consumers know where their food comes from.

The final point that I want to make—and Gareth Hughes touched on it—is we were very focused on the fact that we didn’t want this bill to be a non-tariff barrier—in other words, a piece of regulation or law that could be used against us in international countries. We interrogated Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to give us some comfort that the regulations will be drafted in accordance with and that they meet our international obligations. So, with those particular comments, the National Party supports this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s an absolute privilege and an honour to rise and stand in the House tonight to speak on this bill. It would be remiss if we didn’t truly honour the whakapapa of this bill—those stewards that have over many, many years advocated on behalf of consumers and on behalf of New Zealand produce for New Zealand’s story to be told, so I pay my respects to and honour Sue Kedgley, who, I think, originally introduced this bill in 2007. It didn’t get past the first post at that time, but then it was picked up again by the Green Party member Steffan Browning. Steffan Browning in the 51st Parliament got it a fair way along. It was intended as a stand-alone bill and then it was picked up by my good friend and fellow East Coastian—it must be where all good things are from eh, Gareth, but the member—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!

—Gareth Hughes, the honourable member Gareth Hughes, from the mighty East Coast, Tai Rāwhiti.

But to see the passion and the enthusiasm with which you picked up that task—and it wasn’t an easy task which you were required to do. Some say it might have been a little bit like herding cats to get to the end point. But I do want to acknowledge just the way that you respectively worked with all the various considerations and constituencies across this House to get this bill to land where it has.

I want to also, too, acknowledge the advocacy of those in various industries: Eric Roy, New Zealand Pork. You know, it was at quite a late stage when cured meats came into the final product of this bill, and as we know—actually, I didn’t know at the time, until it was from strong advocacy from the likes of Eric and those within the industry that informed me that over 80 per cent of cured meats in New Zealand are imported. Now, I don’t know if a whole heap of folk really know that. I know I personally didn’t myself. So thank you for your advocacy on behalf of your industry to ensure that New Zealanders as consumers have the ability to identify and know where our good old Kiwi pork comes from.

One of the challenges, too, which we had substantive debate on over the course of this bill as it progressed through the various stages is that in New Zealand we have a very high expectation of our farmers and our agricultural sector with regards to our animal welfare standards, and we know that that contributes to “Brand New Zealand” and the way that we are portrayed and perceived around the world. Now, when those standards aren’t required by competing countries and you’re a New Zealand producer trying to produce a premium product but the consumer doesn’t know that there are those competing tensions and wonders why there’s one product that’s a whole heap cheaper than the other, it’s this bill that plays a significant role in ensuring that our farmers in New Zealand can maintain their competitive advantage at a domestic level. So to those within the industry, I commend you.

I also, too, want to acknowledge the likes of Mike Chapman from HortNZ. They too have been very vocal advocates on behalf of the horticultural industry. That’s particularly for fruit and vegetables, but fruit and vegetables that are consumed that do have competitive tensions with imported produce. Again, they contributed very effectively over the passage of this bill as it has been through its various heads. I do want to acknowledge the comments of the Hon Nathan Guy—the bill did require a little bit of panel beating, as I think he called it. Just to all the members on the Primary Production Committee over the period of that panel beating, but in particular to the officials who really came on board and, effectively, had to pull a bill out, completely amend it, and to the officials in the Hon Kris Faafoi’s office, as well, where it was brought under the fair trading scheme—I really just want to acknowledge the collaborative efforts of those various officials.

When we turn to the substance of the bill, for the Labour Party, it’s been our position for some time. It’s been interesting talking to various constituents who have advocated for country-of-origin labelling for many years, and talking to some of my senior colleagues over the course of this bill as it’s progressed through the House, understanding, again, the whakapapa, why things progressed and others didn’t, at a particular time. I guess we have to acknowledge the competing interests across industry within the primary industries. I don’t know if there’s universal consensus for this type of labelling, but I do know that for some of the smaller industries where there is extreme competition with imported produce against domestic produce, this will have a very significant effect.

I want to pick up, too, on the comments made, probably across the House but in particular made well by the member Gareth Hughes, that, yes, cucumbers are in but pickles are out, and we had to draw the line at some point. I want to acknowledge, for example, frozen vegetables. I remember quite an interesting discussion in a select committee one day, and I don’t think I’d ever really turned my mind to the life length of frozen broccoli and the impact that it would have if we had a universal commencement date for all produce that this bill intended to collect. If you think about it, if you’re a supermarket and you’ve got a whole lot of, well, frozen broccoli or peas, it’s going to take some time for that produce to sell. So there was, I guess, some sound reasoning as to why we extended out the time frames for the commencement date for frozen vegetables, for example, to come into the Act, and that’s around about—I think it’s 18 months, off the top of my head.

We placed a significant emphasis, or recommended replacing—[Bell rung] Oh, there we go. No, I’m good. I thought I was getting sat down already. I was just getting into it. Sorry, where was I? When we were going through our discussions in the select committee, I guess one of the extant issues for us to really work through—and I acknowledge again the advocacy of the various industry and the lobbyists that have discussed this point with us at some length—for this bill to have full effect, there obviously needs to be the design of the regulatory system that goes around and supports giving effect to the substance of this bill.

The consumer information standard that would be created through the regulation is going to require the country or place of origin of a regulated food to be disclosed by referring to where it was grown, caught, or raised, rather than simply where it was packaged or processed. I think that that was a substantive point of discussion over the period of time. The regulations are also going to require that the commencement date be six months after the date of its notification—that’s for the fresh foods—and 18 months after for the frozen foods.

Now, the definition for regulated foods—that caused a lot of discussion. I won’t cover that off again; I think Gareth did that pretty well. But I think a really big concern for a lot of people was making sure that we could remain consistent with our international trade obligations. So the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade did advise us that this bill could be implemented without breaching any of our international trade obligations, and right now, given the current trading environment that we’re operating in, and given the fact that we have things like the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which will have immeasurable impact—anyway, it’s been a pretty interesting journey—

I apologise to the member, but your time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. If there’s one sure thing in life, it’s that you always get caught out in the end. I’d spent a whole lot of time in the early days of this bill telling Steffan Browning what a wonderful bill he’d designed and how great a job he’d done of bringing it to the House, and I get stood up by the ex-Minister Nathan Guy and told it was a dog of a bill, and probably it was. Fortunately, the last speaker, Kiritapu Allan, backed me up to some extent, but I do apologise to Steffan for leading him astray if he’s in the House, because it did take a little bit of getting into shape.

I also want to acknowledge Gareth Hughes, who got this bill through the House after Steffan left. Like him, I have a bit of an interesting time with bacon too because, whilst I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t like shiny meat, and many will know the reasons for that: actually, shiny meat has got a whole lot of additives, so how can it be a pure product? It can’t be. Anyway, that’s a little beside the point as well.

I just want to make a couple of comments on this, and one of them related, I think, to discussions that many people in this House have had in the course of the progress that we made with the geographical indicators bill, where this topic came up time after time. Interestingly, the chairman of New Zealand Pork is in the House as well tonight, and he would’ve been part of that very same discussion—so there’s a lot of people in this House who have had a discussion on this issue. I think there was a will right throughout the House to try and make this sort of thing work, and so I want to congratulate the Primary Production Committee on getting to where they got to with it, really, because I think they’ve done a great job of it. And I want to congratulate the House on getting to that point, too, during the discussion in the committee stage. So I think it’s an excellently put together bill in the end.

I also think that, when you look at the international market place, almost everywhere you go in the world now, you’ll see country-of-origin labelling—not used, as Nathan Guy said, to mean food safety or any better than anything else; but it’s sold by country. You’ll go to a supermarket in the United States, for example, and meat is sold by the country it comes from, not necessarily by how good or bad it is, but it’s how it’s labelled. And you see that in Singapore and right throughout Asia as well. So it’s becoming very prevalent. And I also think that we’re going to see this bill being the forerunner to many alterations to this in the future enhancing this type of labelling, and that’s because consumers want to know about it.

The last point I want to make, and it did relate to the geographical indicators bill, is that there was a lot of talk about the fact that this could be used as a trade barrier. There was never an intention for that to happen, and I don’t think there’s any danger of that happening, either. I think it’s purely information, really. It gives people information about where their food comes from and that gives them comfort to continue down the path and use that. So that’s pretty much all I want to contribute to the third reading of this bill. I congratulate all those who are associated with it. I think it’s quite exciting that it’s got through the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First as we bring this Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill home in its third reading, and what a long time this gestation period has been.

I would like to acknowledge some of the early proponents of this bill—Steffan Browning and Sue Kedgley and, of course, Gareth Hughes, who has done such a fine job shepherding it through this 52nd Parliament. Of course, New Zealand First have also been long-time proponents of this bill, and I think Richard Prosser spoke fairly decisively in favour of the bill at the first reading. It has been a longstanding position of New Zealand First. Of course, there’s no point in being New Zealand First if you’re not totally in favour of New Zealand products, so it’s totally in our space. We like to see New Zealand products showcased to the absolute premium and maximum of their potential, and this is what this bill will allow consumers to know; New Zealand products are able to be showcased and consumers will know that they are getting the very best produce in the world.

It’s not only the quality of the food; it’s the provenance of the food. And, of course, there are big drives on at the moment to lift our environmental standards and certainly our animal welfare standards. And, of course, we have the highest of food safety standards. I think those are the things that consumers actually really do want to know, and consumers in 55 other countries know this already. We normally pride ourselves on leading the world in this sort of thing, so it is a pity that it’s taken as long to come through as it has. I am pleased that the National Party are supporting this, but it has been like pulling teeth over time. So we finally got them on board and are getting unanimous support for this bill.

Of course, as has been traversed, we did have to make some changes in terms of how we brought this bill forward. We’ve had to create a consumer information standard under section 27 of the Fair Trading Act 1986, and it covers produce that is grown, caught, or raised in whatever country that it is—it will have to be recorded, in terms of single-component foods, at point of sale. As supportive as we were as a caucus, the clear direction I got from the senior members of the caucus who had been through several iterations of this bill was to keep it as simple as possible in the first instance, because it does—and as we discovered through the select committee process—get very complicated very quickly.

So this has very much got to be seen as foundation legislation. It’s the framework which we can build upon, and I think we will probably build upon it quite quickly. I think the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, who will have the power of regulation to expand the bill as he sees fit, will do so in time because the traceability is just getting so much more advanced. Technologies like blockchain—just massive amounts of information are able to be condensed down and processed incredibly quickly. So I think this is getting easier all the time, to do this traceability. As we’ve seen through the consumer studies, actually, I think 78 percent of New Zealand consumers wanted this legislation coming through.

There are also some teeth in this. There’s a $10,000 fine for an individual or $50,000 for a company that transgresses this particular Act, so that’s good. We need to have some back-up.

I would like to showcase the cured pork carve-out because that was one—and I’d also like to acknowledge the chairman of New Zealand Pork, Eric Roy, who’s here tonight, and Francis Parker, who’s been, actually, a stand-out advocate. I actually would like to say that the pork industry, out of all the primary industries in my short time at Parliament that have lobbied us, has probably done the best. They represent something like 93 farmers—they’re a very small industry in the grand scheme of things, but they actually do it really cleverly.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: They bring home the bacon.

They bring home the bacon—well, they certainly have tonight. But I think they are actually an exemplar of how you don’t have to have a big budget to engage constructively with Parliament. Of course, almost two-thirds of our pork products are imported and 85 percent of those come from countries that don’t have animal welfare standards that would meet our own. Whilst we have to be very mindful of the non-tariff barriers and imposing those—and that has been discussed earlier—as an exporting country where we export 90 percent of our food, we cannot be placing non-tariff barriers, or being seen to, so we had to dance around that and make sure that we ticked those boxes very, very carefully, and we certainly did that. It has been to the detriment of the pork industry, the waves of cheap imports, but many of them do not have the same compliance regulations as our local products do. So I’m sure all New Zealand consumers will be getting out there and supporting their New Zealand - raised pork. Well, perhaps not Mr Hughes, but he’s probably earned his exemption from purchasing. Also, I think 20 percent of beef in the winter is imported from Australia, mainly, and I think that’s something that consumers wouldn’t necessarily know.

Just going on to Mr McKelvie’s statement before about how consumers around the world do have access to this information already, and it is a big showcase. I recently, over the recess, had the privilege of going to Taiwan with a couple of my parliamentary colleagues—Kieran McAnulty and Priyanca Radhakrishnan, for those that are interested; it was not a junket, we were working hard—and one of the things you do when you go on those trips is you go to the local produce markets to see what New Zealand produce you can find. We went to this particular delicatessen where we found some Zespri kiwifruit. All the product there was beautifully presented—absolutely beautifully presented. We saw some beef steaks from Japan, wagyu beef that was selling for the equivalent of $190 for what looked like about a 300-gram steak—just for a single steak. That’s what you can do if you really showcase your product, if you’ve got a premium product and you can really position it in the market. I think if we’re doing this domestically, it’s going to help us doing it overseas.

I back up the comments, I think, that were made by Kiritapu Allan earlier, that the New Zealand entities that probably showed some resistance to this in the select committee process, some of the bigger export lobbyists or lobby groups, are actually missing the point totally. It is a real opportunity for us to be really proud of what we export, and we shouldn’t be at all concerned that that may be imposed on us overseas, and, in fact, it is already, of course, in 55 other countries.

So, in conclusion, I think it has been, actually, a really good example of the Parliament working well. I have considered long and hard whether I’m prepared to put this on the Hansard, but the Hon David Bennett actually did a pretty fair job of shepherding it through as the chairman of the Primary Production Committee. He’s done some pretty woeful other things but on this particular occasion he was pretty competent. It shows when you’ve got a will to get something through as a committee and as a Parliament that you can make anything happen, even some relatively complicated legislation like this.

I’d also like to commend the officials. We did get really good support. It was quite a complicated process, and, again, the Parliament is well served by our officials, as we were in this case.

So without further ado, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like, on behalf of New Zealand First, to once and for all commend this Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, it was clear to see the National Party heritage of that member, Mark Patterson, coming to the fore again as he commended—the tone in his voice as he admired—the Hon David Bennett. Fantastic work—come on over, son. Come on over.

Now, look. Let’s delay no more. The time is here. This bill can now progress. It can be released into the legislative wilderness to commence its merry journey. We’ve heard from the other side of the House how it has taken some time to reach this point, and I encourage them to delay no more. Seize this opportunity. Shorten your calls and advance it forthwith.

So, clearly, we’ve heard, it gives the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the right to include regulatory powers to capture some consumer information standards. Yep, those are appropriate on certain foods, and that’s around single ingredients. That was one of the big complicating factors here: how do you assess a country of origin if there are multiple potential ingredients—etc., etc. So we’re talking fruit, vegetables, meat, and seafoods—captured in fresh or frozen state—able to be included under this.

Now, one of the concerns we’d had, and it was voiced by the Hon Nathan Guy initially, on this side was around the potential for this to become a non-trade barrier, and given trade is so important for New Zealand, that was a big concern for us. That’s been alleviated, though, and so we’re happy to support it at this stage.

It’s important to touch on—and I don’t think I’ve heard it, actually, in tonight’s debate—that this is for retail sale of food products. So where they’re sold in supermarkets, for example, it would be required to have this country-of-origin labelling, but if food is sold in a presented state in a restaurant, for example, then that is not required—also any food being sold at a fundraising event. So you can imagine a local community group going along to their local Bunnings Warehouse store, for example. They’ve got enough to worry about with trying to determine whether onions should be on top or underneath sausages, without having to then worry about trying to include an origin for that particular product. So on that basis, this side of the House commends the bill and encourages the opposite side to get on with it. Thank you.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m proud to rise and contribute to the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I’m proud to rise in support of this, because I come from the beautiful Tai Rāwhiti of the beautiful electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti where, of course, amongst other things we are the citrus capital of Aotearoa, where we sell 75 percent of all oranges. Not to say that we are also the chardonnay capital of Aotearoa, although some of our colleagues across the way will dispute that. But I’m proud because this bill goes some way, from my perspective, to not only protecting but enhancing, and sharing the authentic Aotearoa New Zealand food story. This is what this bill enables.

I too want to stand and congratulate the original ushers of this bill—mentioning the former Green member Sue Kedgley and, of course, I want to acknowledge a friend that I shared membership of the Primary Production Committee with, Steffan Browning, who has also joined us here in the House, and, of course, a fellow Gisbornite Gareth Hughes who has ushered this bill through. It’s exciting times.

Like the bill says—the purpose is actually in the title—it allows the consumers the right to know what’s in their food. Of course we’ve heard lots of contributions from various members in the first and second readings and committee stage of the bill about how the select committee decided to take an approach to get the bill through. I want to commend the vision and the collaborative way in which members of the select committee, obviously supported by the officials, ensured that we brought a bill to this House that we can unanimously agree will make a difference to, like I said earlier, protecting and enhancing the unique Aotearoa New Zealand food story.

In that regard, I just want to deviate slightly and acknowledge an ancestor of mine by the name of Hine Hākirirangi, who travelled in the mighty waka migration. Her brother was Paoa, who was the captain of the Horouta waka, and comes from our region. She was renowned for bringing the kūmara plant to Aotearoa New Zealand. People will say, “How do you preserve a kūmara plant when you are travelling across the sea?” Well, Hine Hākirirangi actually strapped the plants under her breast line. Research says that she created an innovative boob tube to keep the plants dry and warm. And she planted them, when they landed here in Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa on my maunga of Manawarū. So we claim to be the first planters of the kūmara through our tipuna Hine Hākirirangi.

So back to the bill, because this was about celebrating our unique New Zealand food story. This bill, although the debate has been on whether it goes deep and wide enough and what foods are in it and what foods are out, I think it’s an absolute starting point to ensure that consumers when they go into the stores, like we in this House all do, and make informed choices about what foods we want to buy, then we want to be able to pick up those items and actually know where they’ve come from. And why do we want to do that? We want to ensure that we are making those informed decisions that the foods we are purchasing are safe.

But we also want to flip it and say, “Actually, if we have a country of origin and we’ve got good New Zealand Aotearoa unique stories about our food, then why can’t we promote the provenance and competitive advantage that this bill can also enable to happen?” So it is a thought, and I know it doesn’t go far and not everyone’s going to be happy on both sides of the debate, but actually, as a progressive nation protecting our unique competitive advantage, it is definitely a bill that we need to celebrate in this House.

Of course there’s been mention around supermarkets versus community events in terms of you don’t have to be subjected to this mandatory labelling. I just want to stand up in this House and acknowledge all the farmers markets, again throughout my electorate—Hawke’s Bay farmers market, Gisborne’s farmers market—because many of us frequent those farmers markets and they actually grow great local produce. Of course they will be relieved, I guess, knowing that this bill does not capture the food produce that they grow locally and sell in their own respective farmers market. Of course that’s a phenomenon that’s gone right throughout the country and it’s uniquely New Zealand and it should be protected and celebrated.

So again, the bill that’s been presented, debated, does go a long way to contribute, like I said earlier and what everybody has said, to ensuring that consumers are well informed when they purchase certain food groups. It is a starting point. We need to ensure, when we pass this bill in its third and final reading—empowering the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs through the Fair Trading Act—that this bill enables him to enhance the regulations if we want to expand the capture of the existing food groups that have been identified through this bill. That again sends a very serious signal to our traders, to our trading partners, how seriously we take and protect the Aotearoa New Zealand food story.

So I want to again acknowledge the original folk that brought this bill into the House and, of course, the hard-working collegial work of the select committee and, without doubt, the patience of the officials. When you look at the bill and how pretty much parts have been deleted, it means that they have worked very hard to ensure that we are presenting a bill here that all sides of the House agree with.

So I’m pleased, like I said, to say that I come from one of the most beautifully producing regions throughout this country. This bill will go a long way to ensuring that we have at least consideration for discerning consumers that frequent supermarkets, as I do. I’m not like Mr Hughes there, who goes and hunts out all the pork. You know, it depends on how you feel about any given day whether pork is on the menu or not, but I’m glad that the select committee took the pork industry submission seriously and made the last adjustments to ensure that bacon was included in this bill. Like Mr Hughes, I have concerns around our pork industry and the importing of too much pork and not ensuring that our own local pork industry is allowed to grow and flourish. This bill isn’t about addressing that, but it does say that we do listen to our pork industry producers and hence we have included that particular food product in this bill.

I don’t have much more to add, but it was important that we got up on this side of the House to support this third and final reading. It’s important that we are giving consumers informed decisions around food choices. The Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill is intending to do exactly that. It is a starting point; it’s not an end point. And like we’ve heard other members say in this House, giving the powers to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to regulate to add more foods to the list, I think is the right way. I’m assured that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will ensure that the right checks and balances are applied before he adds to that list. That’s an assurance I’ve heard him give in this House. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to its speedy passage in its final reading. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, it is great to have this bill get to the third reading, and it’s an opportunity to reflect on how it got here. I would like to congratulate the member Gareth Hughes for shepherding it through what was at times quite a difficult select committee stage, but we got it there and it’s now here for the third reading. But my constituent, who, I hope, is in the—oh, he is there. It’s fantastic to have Steffan Browning here, who was the originator of the bill, and to have him in the gallery to enjoy this moment tonight is, I think, fantastic. It wasn’t the last act that Steffan did in his time in this House, but it was pretty close to it. So it’s fantastic to have him here to enjoy this moment. I think what drove Steffan was, of course, the right for people to know exactly where their food comes from and the country of origin that it comes from. He’s a very great supporter of the farmers market in Blenheim, and I think that sort of speaks really to what drove him.

Coming from Marlborough, of course, which is New Zealand’s largest wine-producing region, every bottle of wine actually has on it the country of origin. So it’s a given in the wine industry and it has been for many, many years, and it is quite natural that people would expect to know where everything else that they consume comes from. You make your own choice whether you’re going to drink a New Zealand wine or a Chilean wine, but you now also can make a choice whether you’re going to eat a New Zealand potato or an Australian potato or an Irish potato. I think that we all actually understood that. The select committee was all behind it and, obviously, the House is all behind it.

There were some sorts of difficulties with the legislation, as we thought there would be when we worked our way through. In the end, we found out that the Minister had the right, through regulation, to do it anyway. To be able to pass the various regulations is quite difficult legislatively, to put it all in legislation as to where a food type ends, or as to when does it become a New Zealand item or an Australian item, when you start to add other ingredients into a food item for sale, so I think it’s fantastic that we got there in the end, and I’d like to commend this bill to the House.

This is a five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am delighted to speak at the third reading of this bill, the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. I too want to acknowledge Mr Gareth Hughes for bringing this bill to the House, but also the originator of this bill Mr Steffan Browning, from Marlborough—mighty province—for the work that he did. I know that this bill should be equally shared between Mr Hughes and Mr Browning.

It has been a long passage for this bill, but it was actually a very rewarding exercise for us, as the Primary Production Committee, to actually work through all the issues here. As we’ve heard, we started with a stand-alone bill. It had quite a lot of issues with it. We heard many submissions. We had excellent advice from our advisers, and I do want to acknowledge all of the officials and advisers that were constantly asked. We were testing them every step of the way to try and come up with new things or testing some ideas that we had.

In the end result, I think we have a very fine piece of legislation. We’re amending the Fair Trading Act to provide for these new consumer information standards. The actual details in terms of how the country of origin labelling will actually roll out will be set out in regulations, and it will be staggered so the industry will have time to adopt these new labelling requirements.

I think we’ve had all of the different interests in our minds in the crafting of what we’ve got now with this bill. It’s all about the consumer. It’s all about giving the consumer the information about the origin—where their food comes from. I believe that we have made a very bold step with this legislation in ensuring that that will now happen. It will happen. There will be labelling. Sure, we’re not going to be covering every possible food item—the many thousands that are on our shelves—but it will apply to single-ingredient foods that are fresh or frozen and unprocessed or minimally processed. That was one of the big tasks of our committee: where do we draw the line? How large or how small? How many foods do we capture? But I think we actually struck a really good starting point by the single-ingredient foods

I had a stroke of inspiration when we were in the select committee—probably the one and only contribution I’ve really made—when I actually came up with: what about frozen foods? That opened up a whole new dimension of our discussions because prior to that it was all about fresh foods. So that sort of enlarged it to frozen single-ingredient foods. I like to think that my little “frozo-contribution” has helped improve the bill that we have here today.

This is a very welcome piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge all the contributions that have been made so far, especially Mr van de Molen, the new National Party thespian. I think he’ll rival Andrew Bayly in terms of the presence that he has in the House. They’ve been wonderful contributions. This is worthy of a celebration—it’s worthy of a celebration—and, while Mr Hughes cannot enjoy pork, I’m sure we’ll be able to do a pot of New Zealand pork and pūhā. I’ll have the pork, and he can enjoy the greens. But it’s worthy of a celebration because the consumers now across Aotearoa will, in time, know the country of origin of a fair amount of foods that they purchase every day—where they will be coming from. Thank you. Kia ora tātou.

Hey, I’d like to acknowledge all the previous speakers. I’ve had enough of Mark Patterson’s puns in the House tonight—I’m not one to tell porkies! All the issues have been well traversed. The Nats support this bill. Parliament costs $300 a minute, so I’m going to speak for one minute and save us $1,200. I commend this bill to the House.

I had to get up in a bit of a flash for that one. Thank you very much to the previous speaker. I’m pretty pleased—and proud as, actually—to be able to stand here and support the dignified whakapapa of this legislation, the country-of-origin food labelling bill, and pretty impressed with my colleagues and our members who have brought this bill to this place and absolutely appreciative of the House and the wide support that the members have given to this bill. This is a long campaign of the Green Party in particular, and my colleague Gareth Hughes has been able to bring it to its final reading—third reading—tonight in the House. It’s a massive moment for our country, actually, and for citizens to be able to know where their food comes from.

I have to be able to mention that Steffan Browning—is Sue up there tonight?—and former members are up in the gallery tonight, watching the passage of this final reading. Sue Kedgley, who brought the original bill in, I think, 2007, and, of course, Steffan, who brought it through the last Parliament. So much work also around, in 2007, the 39,000 signatures, I understand, that were presented in a petition in support of New Zealanders being able to know where their food comes from. So I’m proud of the membership in the community-driven mandate to get this bill to where it is. It’s a bit cute of my colleague Gareth Hughes, as someone who doesn’t eat meat, with the economic benefit of this bill being equivalent to quite a bit of meat eating—if we’re talking about consumption benefit, at least. So, again, really proud.

I understand that 55 other countries already have these sorts of standards in place, so I’m glad we’re getting there. Actually, I was thinking. I am a little bewildered as to why it actually took this long. I think this is pretty common sense and a fantastic step for the people of our country to be able to know where their food comes from. I’m glad we’re finally doing it, and that’s the leadership. The fact that 55 other countries have it, I understand, was perhaps some of the nervousness from some industry, as my colleague Gareth Hughes already alluded to in his speech tonight. There was perhaps some nervousness because of some industry wanting to not have the same standards put in place for them. But I say, back our New Zealand brand, back our New Zealand products, and see the added value and the economic benefits for our own New Zealand made products.

I’m really pleased that we’re putting this through. I had a look and my colleagues in the House tonight have covered what the actual bill includes, but I did want to at least mention that what is happening, under the Fair Trading Act, is there will be this “disclosure of a regulated food’s country or place of origin.” It is interesting that those “regulated foods must include food that—(a) is either—(i) only 1 type of fruit, vegetable, meat, fish, or seafood that—(A) is fresh … or frozen and is not, for example, dried, cured, or pickled; and (B) [that] is no more than minimally processed”—just to give members and people a little bit of further understanding. There’s been lots of acknowledgment tonight of pork being put in. I think that’s really good, considering that, I think, two-thirds of pork is imported, including from countries that may have weak or no animal welfare standards. Because this is really just about informed choice and people being able to make those informed choices with this labelling, at least informed of the country of origin.

I did actually appreciate my colleague Meka Whaitiri’s discussion on country of origin as a wider issue. She talked about the whakapapa and the indigenous ingenuity of transporting and transferring foods. It made me think of heirloom seeds and the journey of the kūmara. Obviously, in this bill, it excludes, I guess, second on-sell, like if you’re going to be selling food in cafes or restaurants, of course, the committee and the advisers have obviously found that it’s perhaps not pragmatic and practical to have labelling in that instance but that we’re particularly looking at origin, retail, and supply, so food labelling required for that.

I just also wanted to pick up on where to next, mainly because, as my colleague referred to, there were quite a lot of changes that this bill went through, through the committee, with good advice. We’ve, perhaps, got a good starting point of what is included and how. It’s really good to see that we’ve got a bit of enforcement through offences for false or misleading labelling on packaged food, I understand, with fines of up to $10,000 for individuals and $50,000 for organisations, just to give it a little bit of teeth and to ensure that we mean what we say when we want New Zealanders to know where their food comes from. But it did go through some other sort of compromises and changes and a little bit of balancing-out of a pragmatic approach and being sure that we can also put in further regulations that are going to have a little bit more of the detail of how we do this.

It does, then, leave the question of where to next, if this is a good starting point. I absolutely wanted to pick up on the possibility, for example, of plain language in ingredients. For example, I have to have help from my personal trainer to understand that one teaspoon of sugar equals four grams and that 800 milligrams of sodium should be our cut-off point. See, I can’t get that understanding from the current way that I have a whole one second of supermarket time to look at and try and work this out. I do think there’s possible areas of plain language to be looked at.

New Zealanders, with this bill, will have the power to make their choices based on country of origin, and the reasons why New Zealanders, in surveys and petitions, are in clear support of this is because they want to make those ethical consumer choices. That will mean that there is still work to do, especially around things like palm oil production and really needing to know what products we are buying have that included.

So, all in all, a celebration for our country tonight and my personal pride in my colleagues and the members of the party who have pushed this through, my appreciation for the colleagues across the House and their acknowledgment of this as a real positive step for our industry, for our market, and especially for our citizens.

I wondered if, perhaps, also we might even start to drill it down to town or region of origin in the future. Although, you could just be like Paeroa and actually just put the name of your town on the fizzy drink that they make, so that everyone’s very clear. Sometimes you can work out the town of origin if it is New Zealand made. But this is a really good step and a really good sign. I congratulate Gareth Hughes, Steffan Browning, Sue Kedgley, and all the members, that we are able to put this through tonight. Kia ora.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a privilege to take a short call on the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill, which is in the name of Gareth Hughes and is going through its third reading tonight. I just want to congratulate the member for all his hard work and mahi in bringing the bill this far, and the difference that it is going to make. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Indeed, it is an honour and a pleasure to speak—and I think I may be the last speaker—on the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill. Good things take time, and I can go back some years in this place and recall, I guess, early discussions. I’d like to acknowledge Steffan Browning and I know Sue Kedgley is up there in the gallery, and there are a few new converts to this, with Eric Roy being one of them, given he’s on the New Zealand Pork board now. He too sees the wisdom of this. Some have seen it for a long time.

But it’s kind of typical really, we do all the hard work—us old blokes and lasses—and some young whippersnapper comes along and claims all the credit for it. So I guess in acknowledging the member Gareth Hughes here, look, he’s done a great job. Some of it’s about timing and it’s about having a bit of luck, but he’s followed through on what has been started a long time ago.

The question is, you know, as a food-producing nation, why didn’t we have this in place a long time ago? I can only speak for the good old days, and that’s the last time we were in Government and this issue did come up. Sue Kedgley was one of the MPs, and I guess that at that time, the proposal was bound in with a lot of other initiatives from the Green Party that in the view of the coalition partner, the Labour Party, it was kind of one step too far, considering the trade implications in it. So, unfortunately, the country-of-origin labelling part of it got parked. I’ve always personally been a staunch advocate for it and, indeed, it’s been Labour Party policy for at least the last three elections, but, as I say, good things take time.

Can I say the fact that 55 other countries have this in place, or a similar system, does say that we’re a bit slow in getting around to it. We talked about geographical indicators, and, in fact, we passed a piece of legislation in this House that actually protects the right of winegrowers to say where their wine comes from—not just its country but, actually, the region of a country. So we’ve accepted the wisdom and the value of that for wine.

“Provenance” is a word that’s kicked around a lot, so other regions in the world—and Europe, in particular—that have traded on this have appreciated that consumers want to know not only the country but the region that food comes from. I think that as we move forward to having more value and not just volume from everything we do in the primary sector, we’re starting to appreciate and look for the potential for provenance to deliver better value for the farmers, for the growers, for the horticulturist, and, indeed, for the consumers, because people want to know that the food that they are consuming is good for them, has been produced in an ethical way, and, indeed, comes from a country that is proud to produce safe food—that is, indeed, New Zealand.

I guess we could say that the member has also brought home the bacon, to some extent, and, obviously, there were some contentious issues that came up through this bill. I personally would have rather had a bill with a wider scope, and, as Minister for Food Safety, that was one of the discussions we had with the Green Party and with members of the select committee, but it was too hard. There are technical issues—I appreciate that—so in the end, we’ve arrived at what I think is a fair balance to get a country-of-origin labelling system in place that we can build on as we learn and start to appreciate more, as I say, the issues of provenance.

I’ve got a dream that Golden Bay, in the top of my electorate, which is a geographically isolated area except for a good road in and out and wonderful sea links, and is an area proud of its produce—if it gets on board and it gets some support from Fonterra, it will develop a provenance brand around Golden Bay that looks at seafood, that looks at dairy products, and that looks at meat products and horticulture. They will start to build value from everything that they do.

Can I say that in terms of the definition of “country of origin”—and it’s probably been referred to by previous speakers—it’s that it’s the country in which the food was grown, harvested, or raised, but not where it was packaged, manufactured, or processed. So it is, as I said, at an early stage of consumers’ right to know.

Can I say, regarding the questions of whether it is packaged, manufactured, or processed, that those things are becoming more important and the international food trade. Can I put on the record that in the area of mānuka honey, where we, as a Government, established a standard that says “This is scientifically proven mānuka honey.”, and monofloral and multifloral—there are issues around that. But we’re proud to have established something that is getting for us in the market place some really, really crazy—I’d almost say—prices for 500 grams of mānuka honey because there are some medicinal properties connected with that. I know that if it is used on open wounds, it can clear those up sometimes when other normal, conventional medicines won’t do it—the point being that we have a really valuable product. But there’s an issue around the credibility of that in some markets, and so there’s Miere, which is a group of Māori honey producers, and the bee-keepers and a number of others who have made an application for a trade mark application that would protect their right to claim the term “mānuka” in the market place, and can I say that we support that as a Government.

💬 Nuk Korako: Really?

We do. They’ve come to us for some money. But can I say that I’ve been somewhat cautious because we do and, I think, we should go to the courts to ensure that we have a trade mark to protect “mānuka”, but as long as there are people exporting mānuka honey in either big drums or in lesser containers that ends up not being pure mānuka honey, then our country’s reputation is at risk. So I put on the record that we will support that application if the honey industry get their act together and bring some self-discipline off the back of a standard established by the Ministry for Primary Industries and an export process and packaging process that should ensure that what is on the label, or what is in the jar, is true to label.

So I’m happy to say that off the back of the initiative passed in this House tonight to identify country-of-origin labelling, it gives us value as a country and enables consumers to know where their food comes from. But in exporting products from our country—particularly, if a trade mark is established—we need to know that what we export is absolutely true to label and has integrity in every part of the production system behind that. So I look forward to us making progress on that.

Can I say that the wine industry, too, is a very proud wine industry. Producing Marlborough sauvignon blanc is, I guess, clearly the best international brand that we have, but a third of that is exported in bulk and bottled offshore, and for the most part, it is true to label. It’s “Marlborough sauvignon blanc” when it’s sold in the shops around the UK and EU and in other markets, but there is a lesser, if not a complete, inability to actually guarantee that what goes in a bottle is what has left our shores. So the packaging, manufacturing, and processing of food from New Zealand is, arguably, just as important—particularly in the export markets—as the production of this and the growing of it. The reality is that when we have food that is of value, then people want to copy that and use our labels, or use our reputation, to sell their own food.

Can I say that there’s another issue here, which was discussed, I’m sure, by the select committee, and that is what types of food businesses will be required to label. At this point, the supermarkets, when they sell fruit and the single-ingredient products covered by the legislation, will be, but restaurants will not be required to. What I’d say to you is that it should be New Zealand’s long-term objective to have restaurants proudly displaying the food that they are selling and its country of origin, because in that way, the effort that New Zealand farmers and horticulturalists put into growing the finest-quality food—and if it’s purchased by a restaurant to sell on to customers, then they should be proud of saying “We bought this from the best country in the world.” So, again, that is another evolution, I think, that will come from this very, very good piece of legislation.

Can I say that this is a wonderful piece of legislation. It’s taken a long time to get here, but this will support the efforts of New Zealand producers—get them more value—because people will want to buy from the country that produces the finest food in the world.

Bill read a third time.