Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Landry, it is good to be able to give this speech before someone who I know is also passionate about producing good pineapples and other good food in her electorate. I address the Australian parliament about country-of-origin food labelling because it is such an important issue. We have competitive advantages in agricultural parts particularly, which is what I choose to talk about today, in proteins. Red meat and dairy protein are in the Asian diet and they are really something that people are looking for. We have a great competitive advantage in starch-based products, so rice and wheat, where we can use mechanisation. We also have a competitive advantage in horticulture, particularly when we export it counter-seasonally.

They are great things that we export, but one of the things that Australian consumers need to have is a sense of trust in the system when they buy domestically produced products. There needs to be good labelling around it. I do not think it is unreasonable for Australian consumers to want to know what they are eating. I do not think it is unreasonable for Australian consumers to want to trust that the label they are looking at is a clear representation of the product they about are about to consume. It pleases me a great deal, as a new member of parliament, that we are talking about this issue. It pleases me a great deal that the Australian government is addressing this, because it is something that has been the bane of many people's existence for a very long time. Labelling such as 'Product of local and imported ingredients' really does not tell anyone anything. It was a bit of cop-out to even let that one go through to the keeper in the past, and it is good that we are addressing it.

Simple truth should be simple truth, but of course it is not always that straightforward when we are trying to put it on labels. People who go into our shops are usually time poor: they are living busy lifestyles; they want to be able to look at the product and assess that product clearly and quickly before they put that product in their shopping trolley. It is important to understand that when we do this labelling it needs to be very clear, it needs to be visually large—it needs to jump out—and there needs to be a level of trust for consumers that they can look at that product very quickly and work out what it is and where it came from.

I have looked at agricultural production and marketing of agricultural production in more than 80 countries around the world. I have had the very blessed opportunity to travel as an Australian Nuffield scholar. As part of the scholarship, one of the things we always do is go to supermarkets and look at how food is presented. There are very clever marketers out there. In fact, when I was in Canada one time I came across some apples that were marketed with the slogan 'Sprayed only when necessary'. I thought that was very clever marketing: 'Sprayed only when necessary'—like the farmers actually want to go out and spray for the fun of it! It was some good consumer marketing, and people were saying, 'Will I buy these apples, or will I buy the apples that are sprayed only when necessary?' Of course they take the ones that are sprayed only when necessary.

Marketers always have ways of spinning things to make it sound very good. I saw a picture of a product that was emailed to me yesterday. It was a salt and pepper shaker that had a tick; it said it was 100 per cent Australian owned, with a map of Australia on the label, and there, below that, it said, 'Using local ingredients from South Africa'. You had to look at it really hard to work out that it was a lovely little play on words. Even things like Mainland cheese—when we think of Mainland cheese we think it must be from the mainland. It is from New Zealand. The marketers certainly do try to spin things. When we think about labelling, it needs to be clear, it needs to be transparent and it needs to have the trust of the Australian consumer.

This is an issue that has been very dear to my heart for a very long time. I sat as a voluntary board member on the Australian Made campaign. I am not going to say that that is the right model or the best model, but it is something that I feel a great deal of passion for because it is an older brand that is well recognised—the green triangle with the kangaroo on it—and the management of that is very good. How it is structured is there is a board of directors who are all voluntary—people from industry, people from the union movement, people from the food producing industries—and licensees pay to use that brand. They would pay anywhere between $200 up to $40,000, depending on the turnover of the business. It collected a sum of $2 million, and out of that $2 million we did some advertising. That does not sound like very much money as a total annual advertising spend but because it was well received by our media outlets we could extrapolate that and get greater bang for the buck.

Also, because people were using the brand, people we seeing the brand. That is one of the signals. If people use brands and labelling that the government endorses, they will see it on products and they will begin to trust the brands. But there needs to be a mechanism around the compliance, because there will always be businesses that will attempt to weave their way through legislation to try and exploit for their own commercial advantage.

It needs to be said that branding does not guarantee food safety. Food is not safe, but it is safer than it has ever been. I remember a guy telling me once how, when he was in India, he went to get some milk. In the little village in India, the producers would bring their milk in. The average person coming along would sample the milk before purchasing it. Of course, the purchaser would roll their sleeve up, put their arm in the milk and stir it all around. They would sample this one and go to the next one and stir it all around. Then they would go to the next one. The motto, if you were going to buy your milk in that little village, was: get there early before everyone has had their hand in your milk.

Food is not safe, but it is safer than it has ever been. I was in Ukraine at a market and there was a lady selling chicken. The chicken was sitting on a piece of cardboard. She was keeping the flies away with a piece of branch. If you or I ate that chicken we would be as crook as a dog but they have built up their immune systems. When I was in Fiji at least you knew the chicken was fresh because it was alive. You had to buy the chicken, take it home and slaughter it—chop its head off. At least you knew that it was fresh!

Food is not safe, but it is safer than it has ever been. There is comfort for the Australian consumers with our regulatory environment, with the businesses practices of Australian farmers, and with the employment and safety conditions that we give our workers, which many parts of the world do not have. There is comfort that when you buy a product which is clearly labelled that it is produced in Australia and grown in Australia, that it is most likely to be safe.

I think this is certainly what we are seeing as a push back. This is where the pressure for the government to respond on labelling is coming from. Australians know, in their heart of hearts, that one of the best way to guarantee that the food they are putting in their stomachs is safe—the way to guarantee that the food that they are buying for the children and grandchildren is safe—is to look for the Australian produced and Australian grown product. I am a strong believer in this, and I think we can do it.

Food is not safe, but it is safer than it has ever been. We have seen this becoming a marketing advantage for us. I was in Vietnam and a lady came up to me, begging. She wanted to buy some milk for her younger sister, so I accompanied her to the supermarket. I thought, 'This will be an interesting exercise.' I said, 'We can buy some milk for you. We can buy the infant milk powder that is produced in Australia or I can get three of these containers of milk that are made in China.' Even if she was begging I could not convince her to buy the Chinese infant powder. They went through the melamine scare; they saw people die. Australians know that if they are buying Australian infant powder it is going to be safer to feed to their children, just as the Vietnamese beggar knew that it was safer to buy Australian infant milk powder.

So we want to change these laws. We want to make it clearer. We want to give trust to Australian consumers that when they buy a product if it says that it is grown in Australia it is grown in Australia. We want to make sure that they can see the product and make that choice fast when they are in the supermarket, because the greatest thing you can do is to look after Australian producers and to ensure the safety of families and put good food in their grocery supermarkets.

Debate adjourned.

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