John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion of Mr Ramsey, the member for Grey, and I congratulate him and his standing committee, because this is a longstanding issue. It is not an easy one, because there are conflicting interests. Obviously it is enormously important, if it happens in Australia, that there are jobs involved in the packaging. Even more so, it is important if it is processed in Australia, because that also involves jobs, equipment and everything that goes with it. So there are competing interests here, with those who want to import and package; import and process; or import, package and process.

But I must say that those things are surmounted by the fact that the most important thing is—we are talking food here—where it is grown. Obviously the various retailers, be they the supermarkets or whoever, do not like constraint at all. Basically, they would rather not have too many fences around the way labelling happens at all. And it is also true that there is a large percentage, larger than most of us want to admit, who really are more concerned with the price than where it is grown, processed, packaged or whatever.

We are talking food here; we are not talking fibre, cotton, wool or timber. In fact, it is quite likely fibres will be exported, processed overseas and come back again as an article. That is nowhere near the case when you are talking food. Whether you are talking bread or whether you are talking biscuits, no matter what you are talking about, the chances of Australian product being exported, processed as food and coming back is far less than it is with other agricultural products—or steel, iron ore or coal, whatever you want to talk about. It is far less likely. But the one thing you know is that, if it is grown here, the chances are it is processed and it is packaged here. That means that the government does not have the same responsibility—because it is government's responsibility—to be sure that, wherever it comes from, it is done according to Australian standards. It does not always happen, but it is our responsibility.

I want to congratulate Mr Ramsey, the member for Grey, and his committee for making a genuine and, by and large, very good attempt to come to terms with the issue—because, come to terms with it, we must. It is too important that the information is there for producers and for a lot of retailers—not all but a lot of retailers—who care about the quality of the food they buy and those who care that they support, as much as is feasible, Australian producers, packagers and processors. I do not believe, as this report says, that it costs more for anyone to use the particular labelling that they are suggesting rather than any other sort of labelling.

Country of origin food labelling has been the topic of many public reviews and unsuccessful legislative reform attempts not just in the last 10 years but for far longer than I have been in this place. I would say it has been a big issue for the last 30 years. In those days, far more processing of food to be exported happened in Australia, let alone to be consumed domestically. In March this year another report was ordered on country of origin food labelling. I think the time has come for us to really look at this seriously—and not be too interested in supermarkets or various importers but deal with it honestly. The report found that consumers and peak advocacy groups claim there is confusion about the various country of origin labelling claims for food products in Australia. Anyone who disagrees with that is certainly wearing blinkers.

I think a certain level of confusion also exists for food producers and manufacturers, leading to compliance issues—and I do not think that is an unfair statement either. The level of dissatisfaction with the existing labelling framework indicates that a system which is designed to inform and guide industry and consumers needs to be overhauled. You cannot make it as simple as it can be and simply say that we just have a bar of green or yellow for Australia and black for what is not Australian. If you do it on quantity, we only have to look at, for example, Brazilian juice. It comes over here as an extract and it is one per cent extract and 99 per cent Australian water. So that would be false. It would not be Australian. If you do it on value, then it becomes 99 per cent Brazilian and one per cent Australian. So there are complications in what some people want to make a very simple issue.

Rowan and his team, with the support of the relevant ministers, embarked on an enquiry on this issue and they held hearings in most of the capital cities in Australia. I think most of their recommendations showed a very genuine attempt to come to grips with the issue. It became clear during the inquiry that country of origin of food is not important to everyone but it is very important to Australia's producers and it is certainly important when it comes to the fact that, if it is grown, processed and packaged in Australia, there are no issues. I agree with the committee's findings that any country of origin food labelling regime should not present an impediment to importers and/or provide non-tariff trade protection to our industries. But it should provide clear and accurate information to consumers who wish to make an independent choice to support either Australian farmers or food manufacturers.

The recommendations that have been put before us will not have any significant negative impact on Australian producers or manufacturers and will provide common-sense information that consumers can understand. I am not going to go through those recommendations—they are a matter of record for anyone who wants to look at the report—but I will repeat that this is an issue that has been around for a long, long time. I think the vested interests, who are pretty obvious—and they do not need me to run through them again—and do not want it so defined probably need to button up and just bear with it. There is one thing for sure: if it is grown in Australia, if it is processed in Australia and if it is packaged in Australia, then we know, as the Chinese know, that it is a very good product.

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