Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I go to a matter that has been raised in the media, the other place and this place in relation to the health food star-rating system and the Department of Health website that announced the system and was responsible for its further development. We know that the health food star-rating website was uploaded on Wednesday and an email was sent to all stakeholders informing them of the website. By 8 pm on Wednesday that website had been pulled.

Senator Nash's chief of staff, we understand from her comments in the Senate, rang the person responsible for the program in the Department of Health and that person has now been removed from having direct responsibility for that position. The purpose of the call was to have the website pulled. We understand he was quite correctly told that it was not within a Commonwealth minister's decision to have that website pulled, as it was not a Commonwealth ministerial website. It was, in fact, a state and territory ministerial website with the Commonwealth as one player. The matter was escalated by Senator Nash within the Department of Health, and the website was pulled by 8 pm.

The minister has provided two separate explanations for this. The first is the website was inadvertently put up as it was a draft. The second is that it was subject to a cost-benefit analysis as unanimously agreed by the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation. Neither of these statements is true. All the public health officials—in fact, I have copies of letters from two members present at that ministerial council meeting—believed there was agreement that the food star-rating system would proceed. At the December meeting only the final calculator was agreed, and it had been agreed at a previous meeting chaired by my colleague the member for Blair. All the public health officials have seen the website, as I have. They believe the website was not a draft but was finalised and agreed by all the states and territories, as two state and territory colleagues have stated in writing. They all believe it was ready to go.

On the cost-benefit analysis statement, I go to the ministerial communique from the forum in December. It was clearly shown that, despite the minister attempting to have the ministerial council ensure that a regulatory impact statement was made for a voluntary system for which a RIS is not required, she was not successful. Instead she took the decision to instruct the department to broaden the existing cost-benefit analysis for the front-of-pack labelling system and the communique clearly states that. This decision does not have any effect whatsoever on the ministerial council's decision. The minister took the decision to instruct her department to do some additional work for her own benefit. The food-rating website was not contingent upon that decision.

We know what has been said in the course of Senate proceedings this week. We know that Minister Nash's chief of staff, a former chairperson of a company that lobbies on behalf of the food industry, remained a shareholder of that company at the time of the ministerial council meeting and the intervention to pull the website. No such declaration was made at the ministerial council meeting. I have chaired those meetings, as have my colleagues, and it is a standing item that such declarations be made. In fact, a minister from Tasmania would regularly declare that her chief of staff had a conflict of interest as he owned a winery. I fail to see how this is not a similar serious matter for declaration.

The only reason we know of this shareholding is that the minister had to explain it to the Senate late on Tuesday night. I will take the Prime Minister at face value that he appeared to be unaware of this matter during question time, but I again state that Assistant Minister Nash needs to make a ministerial statement and fully explain this matter to the Senate. I urge the Prime Minister, who said that he will take this matter on notice, to now involve himself in it, to make a full explanation to the House as to what happened in terms of his office, his knowledge of this and the appointment of the chief of staff and Assistant Minister Nash.