Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Makin in this debate on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Country of Origin) Bill 2016. He was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry in the last parliament—a committee I was the chair of and I delivered the report that he referred to, which I will be speaking about in a moment—and so was the minister at the table, the member for McPherson. It was indeed a very interesting inquiry, but I will come to that in a moment. The government amendments to the bill before us are relatively straightforward. In reality, it is a bit of a tidy-up of the original legislation that follows the commissioning of our new country-of-origin food-labelling system. I will refer to those amendments later on in my speech.

Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, I am sure you would be very aware of the saying, and many similar to it, that success has a million fathers, and I will claim some responsibility for the nation's new country-of-origin food-labelling system. In my mind, this was an issue that, for years, had deserved a better answer. While much of the legislation previously had been done bit by bit and incrementally, so it was with country-of-origin food-labelling, where we had finally arrived at a place where labels were confusing, difficult to find and almost impossible to understand. The poor information was frustrating to consumers and producers alike—and we are still waiting for those labels to be phased out. I recognise that a couple of manufacturers are using the new labels—and good on them—and I very much look forward over the next two years to all the rest of the manufacturers getting on board.

In early October 2014, as chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry, I sought ministerial approval from Ministers Macfarlane and Joyce to pursue this inquiry. This space was populated by a plethora of previous reports that had not been acted on, and I thought that it was very important that this one be different. Rather than just recommending that the government study or adopt a new country-of-origin food-labelling system, I thought it was very important that we actually mapped out a path and provided the answer to government. After this committee, we did not need another inquiry to go out and work out how to do it; we actually had the gumption to stand up and say, 'This is the way that it should be done,' and we delivered a report in October 2014—I must have confused the earlier date—entitled A clearer message for consumers.

In early 2015, when I was lobbying ministers for a positive response to the committee's findings, we had the frozen Chinese berries incident during February. Then Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared that enough was enough and that this area of consumer information and protection must be addressed. It was perhaps a little lucky in some ways, because the Chinese berries were clearly identified as Chinese—but it is a very black cloud indeed that has no silver lining. Reports do not always get immediate attention from governments—and I am quite happy to tell people that many reports are picked over for certain facts and positions that committees have arrived at—but, in this case, the Prime Minister declared that there should be alterations and they looked around for the most recent report and, as luck should have it, it was ours. We were in the right place at the right time.

I thank the Minister for Industry of the time, Ian Macfarlane, for inviting me to join the consultative committee. I believe I was able to bring some wisdom learnt through the process of the inquiry to the table on a number of occasions. There were a few suggestions that got thrown around that I was quite opposed to. I said, 'No, we discussed this. We took clear evidence on that particular issue. You need to go back and read the report and understand how the committee arrived at that position.' On two a three occasions, my advice was heeded. I was very pleased with that.

I thought the report from the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry was fairly finely balanced on how we can provide information the consumer wants without that violating our international trade commitments. It is worth remembering that Australia exports far more food than we import, so those international trade agreements are very, very important to us. We then had to provide information on what it was the customers really wanted to know. Some proposed that every ingredient and the country from which it came be identified. The committee's view was that that was far too prescriptive, particularly for Australian manufacturers who use complex global supply lines which may or may not be able to certify and substantiate exactly where every molecule of that food has come from to the manufacturer. Of course, to the manufacturer, the biggest sin in labelling is to mislead the public, either knowingly or unintentionally, with its information. That meant we needed to be very mindful of not making the cure worse than the disease.

It is patently clear that not all consumers are particularly stressed—in fact, I would say most consumers are not particularly stressed—about where their food comes from. Many simply do not have enough money to be choosy, and they are driven by price. Others just have no interest. But there is a strong consumer group—and I think a growing consumer group—in Australia that cares about safety and quality, and they rate Australian-produced food as some of the world's best in both areas. Some make a conscious decision that they want to support Australian farmers and Australian food-manufacturing jobs—and this is a great thing. It is one of the strongest reasons why our labels should easily, quickly and clearly identify the Australian content in the product. That is exactly what our new laws do.

The most important thing the recommendations gave to us, and, consequently, the legislation, was to separate the concept of 'grown'—where the food is sourced—from where it is manufactured. The label 'made in Australia from local and imported produce', which you can still see on your shelves, is virtually meaningless to the layman. I must say that I am quite good at reading labels. What is unsaid is as powerful as what is said on one of those labels. Having immersed myself in this subject for over six months, I find trying to buy Australian-grown and Australian-processed ham can still be quite a challenge, let me tell you. I understand how to read that system, but only because I spent six months living, eating, breathing and sleeping it. Clearly, it was not good enough to give the information, so we made a clearer message on that.

The first of those two things is manufacturing, and this government amendment goes to the point of what transformation is. That is a very important point. The other half of the message is the source country. In this case, we could have specified every country in the world, but we chose just to specify Australia so as not to make it too complex and to provide the information that we believed the Australian consumer was looking for: is this Australian? They can pick up the packet—it is in bigger writing than it has ever been in—and there clearly is the green and gold kangaroo and the bar graph, which will give them specific information. I think this will be welcomed by consumers and, in the end, it will be welcomed by producers.

I now come to the issue of the opposition's amendment. It would be fair to say that I have been approached by a number of people in the Australian seafood industry as to why we did not recommend that the new legislation around the country-of-origin food labelling be applied to the final point of sale of seafood, as it is in the Northern Territory—with that final point of sale referring to a cafe or a restaurant. It is a point of view that I have some personal sympathy for. However, there were a number of reasons why the committee did not recommend it. Firstly, if we had, it would have been the only foodstuff that was required to identify its point of origin at the tertiary retail point. We do not force that level of disclosure on beef, processed meats, salad, cheese or any other product, so to do so would mean you would have to make a special case for seafood only. I am not saying that case cannot be made, but it requires some very careful consideration before you would get to that point.

Secondly, the committee only took evidence on this particular issue from the Northern Territory seafood industry and from Australian restaurateurs. Those views were not in concurrence; they were totally opposed. One of the reasons that the Northern Territory has this system is historical. In the Northern Territory—and no-one was quite too sure why—every shop at any level that sells fish must be licensed to do so. That is not the case in the rest of Australia, but in the Northern Territory they have a special fish licence. It would be a brave government that would come out and say, 'We're going to put a new licence on every restaurant and fish outlet in Australia,' without having a very good understanding of what the parameters are and what the repercussions might be of that particular recommendation.

When the committee considered its recommendations, one of the things that I was very keen on, and the rest of the committee was keen on, was that we actually have a report that government acted on. In my mind, had we put recommendations around seafood in we would have almost certainly had a report that government would not have acted on, because it would have become a political football very, very quickly and something that a minister—and I would not blame them—throw their hands in the air and say, 'This is all too hard; everybody is fighting with each other.' So we avoided the issue.

What the committee did recommend—and this is where I take a small issue with the opposition's amendment, which I know is proposed in good faith, and I take it that way; but I think the cart is a little before the horse—was that COAG should consider forming an Australian-wide legislation surrounding fish retail, if it so choose to. I would not be beyond the government recommending that the current standing committee for industry look at this issue in more depth. Certainly, the committee that I chaired did not have enough information to make those kinds of recommendations.

I understand the drivers and why the Labor Party has made that amendment, but I do think that they are putting the horse a little bit in front of the cart. The lesson here about the successful adoption of most of the recommendations of our report was that we had done a lot of spadework. We actually understood exactly where we were going and we knew what we wanted to do. I think that building-block process is a better way of getting there.

In returning very briefly to the specific government amendments in this bill, what the bill does is clarify the safe harbour clauses referring to significant transformation. That in itself was something that the committee spent some time on—firstly, understanding what safe harbours were and then, secondly, getting our mind around the concept of significant transformation. Some of the examples used are: dicing tomatoes, to use another food term, will no longer cut the mustard; and reconstituting dehydrated goods. The amendment removes the 50 per cent production costs clauses. So it is an effort to make things more understandable and clearer for industry to use. What we want is a simple process that industry embraces because it works.

As has been alluded to many times in this debate, while it was not the primary reason we inquired to advantage Australian farmers are manufacturer, I have no doubt that good information, in this world where our global supply chain is sometimes questioned, will work in our favour and for our farmers and manufactures, but not in such an overt way as to offend those international trade obligations that I spoke about earlier that are so important to our farming and manufacturing businesses.

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