Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I introduce the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Food Labelling) Bill 2012. Whenever the question is asked, overwhelmingly Australians tell us that they would like to be able to easily identify and buy Australian grown food, yet the truth is that current food labelling thwarts this simple request. A walk in any supermarket soon reveals the difficulty. Pick up a packet of bacon, for example, and it may well tell you that it is made in Australia. Any reasonable customer would interpret that to mean that the meat is Australian. A packet of glace cherries tells you that they are Australian owned and made. Similarly, a packet of rice crackers has a cheerful rice-cracker-shaped map of Australia on its front plus the words 'made in Australia'; flip it over and it asks you to see a website for more details. Surely the rice in the crackers is Australian grown? But visit the website you have been referred to by the packet and there is not one mention of where the rice comes from. The cherries are not Australian grown but were glaced here. As for the bacon, the meat was actually imported from another country but cured, sliced and prepared in Australia.

In all three instances, because the food in the packet was substantially transformed, as defined in the legislation, and 50 per cent or more of those transformation costs were incurred in Australia, the food can be legally labelled 'made in Australia' or 'Australian made'. Little wonder, then, that people are confused and frustrated by our current labelling laws. What people want to know is: was this food or the ingredients in it grown here? Current labelling laws leave them none the wiser.

When consumer advocacy organisation Choice surveyed their members, they found that only half of them actually understood what the current terms 'Australian made' and 'made in Australia' mean, and 90 per cent said that country of origin labelling needs to be clearer. Under current labelling laws, packaged food is treated like any other good or service, so the terms 'Australian made', 'Made in Australia' and 'Product of Australia', which has a much higher standard, can be found on virtually any other item you might purchase. But this is at the heart of the problem: food is not the same as just any other good or service and should not be lumped in with them for labelling purposes.

As the 2011 Blewett Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy stated:

As food is ingested and taken into ourselves, unlike most other consumer goods that are just used, naturally consumers are primarily focused on the components and ingredients of foods and not with their substantial transformation, packaging or value adding.

Food is not like any other good. By conflating the processing of food with the origin of ingredients we are stopping Australians from making an informed choice. The language is unnecessarily confusing. We can have clear labelling that lets Australians know if they are buying Australian grown food and if that product has been processed in Australia.

Some will no doubt point to the fact that, while over 80 per cent of Australians consistently tell us they want to be able to easily identify and buy Australian food, when it comes to actual purchases this number drops to between 50 and 60 per cent of people actually choosing to buy local over other, possibly cheaper, options. In short, the argument goes that price ultimately trumps country of origin for Australians when it comes to food and therefore it is not worth the bother to sort out this labelling confusion.

But there are a number of counters to this argument. Over half of Australians are very clear that they do make food-purchasing decisions based on whether the food is local. There is emphatic evidence that the current labelling regime is confusing and misleading Australians. Isn't this sufficient reason alone for the reform?

The Blewett review's findings regarding the values associated with food labelling are particularly important. They tell us that the origin of food is being used by Australians as a surrogate for other issues they care about, including food miles, animal welfare and other environmental and health concerns. In essence, Australians are looking to identify local produce as a way of ensuring the quality of food they seek and rewarding the high standards of our growers and producers.

But perhaps most important is to ask: why would we persist with a food-labelling regime that is arguably giving imported foods a competitive advantage over comparable Australian products? We know Australians clearly want to be able to identify and prefer Australian food. Therefore, surely persisting with a labelling regime where imported ingredients can be labelled as 'Made in Australia', suggesting to most people that they are grown here, is allowing imported food to masquerade as something it is not and to compete unfairly? This argument was also taken up by the Blewett review, which stated:

There are mutual market benefits (to buyer and seller) of promoting food with positive/aspirational origins (e.g., chocolate from Switzerland), yet non-reciprocal benefits from withholding such information when it relates to origins with perceived negative connotations (e.g., food products from countries with poor human rights records). This situation constitutes market failure and the reason for government intervention on the issue of CoOL—country-of-origin labelling.

If, as some contend, Australians predominantly choose what food to buy based on price then there is even less reason to allow imported food to be passed off as Australian. Let Australian and imported food compete on equal footing, supported by accurate and transparent labelling requirements. For that to happen, current labelling requirements must change. Clearly the arguments against reform do not stack up. It is little wonder then that the Blewett review concluded that there is a strong case for reforming our country-of-origin labelling laws for food.

What is inexplicable is why this government, the same that commissioned the Blewett review, has failed to implement these key recommendations to reform country-of-origin labelling for food. The review unambiguously confirmed that the widespread and ongoing dissatisfaction and confusion across Australia regarding country-of-origin labelling is justified. It confirmed that markets cannot deliver it and that governments must.

In the absence of the government taking up this reform, the Greens have acted. With solid evidence to support the reform, and impatience from Australian growers and the community for change, we are proud to introduce this bill. There are two key parts to the amendments put forward in this bill. The first enacts recommendation 41 of the Blewett review by creating a specific section in the Competition and Consumer Act that will deal solely with country-of-origin claims with regard to food. The purpose of this is twofold: to cease the treatment of food as just any other good; and to create a single regulatory regime, retaining mandatory labelling requirements but superseding country-of-origin labelling from the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act.

The Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act is focused on dealing with matters relating primarily to food health and safety. As country-of-origin labelling is centrally concerned with accurate information for consumers and preventing misleading claims, regulation of the matter rests more logically in the Competition and Consumer Act.

The second part of this bill enacts recommendation 42 of the Blewett review, that country-of-origin labelling for food should be based on the ingoing weight of the ingredients and components, excluding water. This codifies the desire of most Australians to know the origin of the food they are buying first and foremost, not where any processing and packaging took place.

The bill removes the ability to make the stand-alone claim 'Made in Australia' about food, and provides unambiguous language and benchmarks. Food that is grown in Australia will be able to state exactly that on labelling, as it can now. Processed food comprising 90 per cent or more Australian ingredients by dry weight will be labelled 'Made of Australian ingredients'. This will establish an easy-to-understand, transparent premium claim that will allow Australians to finally make informed purchasing decisions.

There is often discussion in this country about how to bring the city and the bush closer together. It is a logical and necessary conversation, one that recognises that, with the majority of Australians living in cities like my electorate of Melbourne, but heavily reliant on the work of rural Australians, especially for food, it important to foster understanding and respect. However, much of the commentary on the issue is couched in terms of a divide, and other negativity.

The desire of Australians to be able to make a clear choice and buy locally grown food shows that people living in Melbourne and other cities do understand and value the work of Australian farmers, and they want to demonstrate that tangibly. The arguments for clear country-of-origin labelling to enable this are logical and longstanding, and should be honoured and enacted. This bill seeks to do just that. It should not be the case that you can go into an Australian supermarket and buy a packet of bacon that says on it, 'Made in Australia', when the meat was imported from overseas. This bill will fix that problem and benefit Australian farmers and will stop misleading Australian consumers. I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

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

In accordance with standing order 41, the second reading will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.