Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I also wish to make a short statement in connection with this report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. There are two issues arising from this report which I welcome the opportunity to make some comments on to the House. The first arises from the outbreak of hepatitis A in Victoria and New South Wales linked to imported frozen berries.

We need to be vigilant in our monitoring of imported food. AUSVEG has expressed concern to me, and no doubt to others, that on some occasions Australian monitoring and inspection arrangements are more onerous than those which apply to imported food. The committee asked the department whether this agreement would have any effect on Australia's control of its sanitary and phytosanitary obligations. We were told that this agreement would not in any way undermine our quarantine standards or our capacity to set those standards.

Certainly in the course of submissions made to the committee, AUSVEG expressed concern about how the existing arrangements are being implemented. One of the points that they make is that only something like five per cent of imported fruits and vegetables are referred for inspection, and that no fruit or vegetable products have been placed in the high-risk category, which is where the 100 per cent inspection regime applies. So we end up with a situation where very few imported fruits and vegetables are actually inspected. While there are paperwork audit requirements, in practice there is very little in the way of checking undertaken.

The other issue which they raised in relation to this is country-of-origin labelling. They have proposed the introduction of a mandatory representative label on the front of packaging to represent what proportion of the product is composed of Australian ingredients and an increase in the size of country-of-origin labelling to ensure that it is 40 per cent bigger than surrounding text, with those sorts of changes to be phased in over 12 months to minimise the cost impact on business.

It is the case that most people—I think in surveys it has been something like 85 per cent—want to buy Australian food, for health reasons, for environmental reasons or simply in order to support Australian farmers and Australian food producers. There is widespread public concern that the 'made in' claim used to identify where processing costs are incurred has in fact been used to mislead consumers about the source of the product and that the ambiguity present in the claim of 'local and imported ingredients' is used to obscure the origin of imports and amounts to a loophole which ought to be removed.

AUSVEG has advised me that in the European Union there are country-of-origin labelling laws. In the UK there are country-of-origin labelling laws. In the United States, food retailers must display the country of origin of fresh fruit and vegetables, amongst other foods. It is similar in Canada and there are requirements in places like Japan and Russia as well.

One of the questions in relation to country-of-origin labelling is whether there is a threat to this from other trade agreements—not the one that is before the House now but, for example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The detail of this is not publicly known, but it is a clear risk, as identified by Michael Moore of the Public Health Association, that under this agreement a foreign company may be able to sue the Australian government for loss of revenue as a result of Australian products being given an unfair advantage. I want to draw that issue to the attention of the House, because I think it is a point well made and an important issue.

The second thing that I want to draw to the attention of the House arising from this report relates to our agreement with Vietnam for mutual assistance in criminal cases, to which the committee chair referred. Vietnam retains the death penalty for serious crimes, including drug offences, and of course Australia has a longstanding policy of opposition to the death penalty.

The committee asked questions about this aspect of the agreement. Under the agreement, parties may refuse assistance if the request relates to an offence punishable by the death penalty, unless the requesting party undertakes that the death penalty will not be imposed or will not be carried out. We received appropriate responses and assurances in relation to that. There is a distinction between circumstances in which a person has been charged, arrested or convicted and the circumstances before that—in particular, between matters that are being dealt with by the Australian Federal Police or other agencies and those that come to the attention of the minister. The Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 1987, which we are talking about here, only refers to formal government-to-government mutual assistance requests. In terms of agency-to-agency requests, the circumstances in which the Australian Federal Police would provide assistance are governed by the AFP national guidelines on death penalty assistance.

The national guidelines were revised in 2009. They do not prohibit information being provided in circumstances which could give rise to the death penalty but they do set out factors to be considered and processes to be followed. A whole series of guidelines are in place, which are important. Nevertheless, I draw to the attention of the House that, going back some time, in treaties committee report No. 91, which concerned assistance between Australia and United Arab Emirates, the treaties committee recommended to the government that the instructions—the guidelines, in these cases—should prevent the exchange of information with another country if doing so would expose an Australian citizen to the death penalty. That recommendation was not acted on—although I accept that the guidelines have been revised—and it does seem to be desirable that we move to that position.

I support the report of the treaties committee and commend it to the House.

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