Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a little bit confused as to why I am speaking before the chairman of a committee, but I take that as a great honour and a privilege and I thank the chamber for the opportunity. In my opening remarks I would like to acknowledge the member for Grey, the chairman of the committee, and the member for Hotham, in her absence in this chamber, the deputy chair of the committee, and all members who put in an extraordinarily large amount of work on this inquiry. It is a very important inquiry and one which, of course, has attracted a little bit more attention than we might otherwise have expected, given recent food safety concerns—particularly the well-publicised China berries incident and the potential link to a hepatitis A outbreak.

We heard from many witnesses who expressed many different views, which again highlights the complexity of this issue. To the consumer it all seems very simple: 'Just tell us simply, in a graphic way if possible, where this food is coming from.' But of course those of us who have had the opportunity and the privileges granted to us in this place know that it is far more complex than that. I think the example was used, throughout the work of the committee, of blueberries being brought into Australia from, say, China and those blueberries being used to manufacture a pie in Australia. In that case it is a good thing for Australian companies to be able to say that pie was, at least in part, manufactured in Australia—because people are looking for an opportunity to back Australian products. But it is complex putting that case into a label. How much was done in Australia? Was it 49 per cent or 51 per cent or whatever? Consumers would have different views, generally, about whether it should be 49, 50, 51 per cent or whatever. That is understandable and justifiable. But trying to put all those complexities into a label—a simple label that gives a one-glance snapshot of what was done locally and what was done somewhere else—is very difficult.

The committee was mindful of the need to ensure that Australian manufacturers—those who are transforming imported fruit, vegetables or whatever into an Australian final-use product—do not have their business prospects undermined by denying them the opportunity to indicate that it is a product made in Australia. This is very difficult. I believe the committee made some very sensible recommendations. I originally intended to read them into the record, but I think that will probably be done by the chairman or someone else, so I will not use my time doing so. But I think the recommendations were sensible and get the balance pretty right. They are not perfect, not by any stretch. We were not able to find the perfect solutions, but we did our very best to put forward something which is better than what is currently in place. Hopefully that will give consumers better guidance about where the product they are consuming is coming from. The complexities of fresh and frozen foods that come through New Zealand from places like China and how we deal with those under FSANZ and within our close economic relationship with China—these are things which make the issues here more complex yet again.

But it is not all about food labelling. We really need to be careful, in responding to the Chinese berries outbreak for example, about responding with a labelling response only. I understand that consumers think this is a labelling issue. It is in part. But the systems we have in place to ensure that the food we are importing from other nation-states meets the same standards we would expect here in Australia are every bit as important—I would say more important—than what we put on labels. Going back to the Chinese berries incident, the goods were clearly marked 'Produce of China'. It was not up there in flashing lights, I admit, but it was pretty clear to anyone who takes a look at labels—and of course not all consumers take a look at labels. I am now looking at them more diligently myself than I was before the Chinese berries incident. But it was clearly marked 'Produce of China'. We have to be careful not to give consumers, the Australian electorate, the impression we can fix this problem with a labelling solution alone. We cannot. We have to do something on labelling, but we also need to ensure that we have the very best biosecurity system in the world. The testing systems, the verification systems, we rely upon to test things like China-produced berries before they come to this country and when they arrive in this country must also be the very best in the world.

That takes me to a subject very close to my heart—the position of the Inspector-General of Biosecurity. The inspector-general is the last cop on the beat. He is the guy who sits in the Department of Agriculture, in biosecurity—which was previously called quarantine—and ensures that all of our systems are working. He is independent of the government and he can decide, based on any source, to initiate an inquiry into any part of the biosecurity process if he has concerns that the system has the potential to break down or is indeed breaking down. As I speak, the government for some reason is bringing on the Biosecurity Bill in the Senate. I do not know why it is rushing it now or why it is suddenly bringing it on now. I think a quorum was just called there as a response to that surprise. But I am calling upon the government again today, and I will be having Labor senators move amendments in the Senate sometime soon, to restore the powers, the independence and tenure of the Inspector-General of Biosecurity. Why would the government undermine this position? It just makes no sense to me. I am appealing to government members to talk to the agriculture minister and say, 'Just fix this thing.'

If this bill passes in its current form, Barnaby Joyce, the Minister for Agriculture, becomes, in effect, the Inspector-General of Biosecurity. Is the broader community going to feel comfortable with that prospect? If there is a breakdown in biosecurity in the department, people are going to rely upon the minister to decide whether we should have an investigation into the breakdown! Any minister would be concerned about an inquiry that might just show that somehow they, as minister, might have failed in some way which caused the breakdown. So you cannot have the minister deciding these things. We need an independent statutory officer looking at these things through the eyes of an independent player, with the power to determine what things are looked at and what are not.

On another issue, we heard revelations today on ABC radio that the government has abolished the National Produce Monitoring System. That is a system the Labor government put in place in cooperation with the states through the COAG process, specifically through the Standing Council on Primary Industries—which the government abolished too. SCoPI has gone. There is no format for the Commonwealth and state ministers to get together on these very important issues anymore. They are very important issues. SCoPI identified gaps. We have all these state based systems looking at chemical residues in our fresh produce. We go to the market gardens on a Sunday and we are buying produce. They are great market gardens. We have the best system in the world. But SCoPI identified gaps, because all states are doing things differently. SCoPI decided that we should spend some money on a pilot project over five years to collect the data we need to determine whether these gaps really matter and whether there is a food safety threat to consumers. So we could rely on the science. We could gather the data and ensure that we have the world's best food safety program. But, a year in, the government has abolished the scheme. The government has abolished the scheme at the very time when Australian consumers are, because of the China berry incident, concerned about food safety and what they are consuming.

Chemicals are important; our farmers must have them. But consumers are entitled to know that the system is not letting them down and the chemical residues in the food they are buying at the market are not so high as to pose a threat to their health and safety. I call upon the government to rethink this very silly idea. Barnaby Joyce, the minister, described it as a savings measure. I would have thought the last place the government would go for a savings measure is to food safety in this current political environment. This is a mistake. The inspector-general needs to be restored with all of his powers and independence. The government must do something to redress this very bad decision.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to speak in relation to the report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry's inquiry into country-of-origin food labelling, A clearer message for consumers.

Leave granted.

In seeking leave, I acknowledge that I have spoken previously in relation to the report. But I acknowledge also the contribution by the member for Hunter, and I also congratulate and commend the member for Grey for his outstanding work in chairing this committee.

I acknowledge from the outset that, since the release of this report, the issue has moved quite considerably in the public's eye. I acknowledge that the member for Hunter referred specifically to the issue of the imported berries and whether there has been a link to hepatitis A associated with that importation. He quite correctly indicated that, while that has caught the public's attention and has probably focused activity in relation to country-of-origin labelling, there was nothing in that outbreak and the link to the Australian company involved that would have been fixed, if you like, by country-of-origin labelling, because the berries were actually labelled quite clearly. As I have said in the past, and I say now for the record, the company involved in this issue, Patties Foods, are a fantastic Australian company doing a remarkably good job in a whole range of food manufacturing areas. They have taken their responsibilities very seriously in relation to this matter. They employ 500 people in my electorate of Gippsland and around 650 people around Australia, and I know they are working very diligently with the government to overcome any issues associated with the importation of berries and other products.

I want to speak very briefly, and I appreciate the member for Grey giving me this opportunity, in relation to one particular issue that was covered in the report. It was recommendation 7 where the committee recommended:

… that the Northern Territory’s country of origin labelling of seafood in the food service sector be referred to the Council of Australian Governments for consideration

As I said last year on this issue, this is a particularly important issue for the people of Gippsland as well as more particularly for the broader seafood-consuming public. What we have seen in the Northern Territory over the last several years is a regulatory environment where diners in restaurants, in clubs, in bistros and in pubs are fully informed when they purchase seafood. We do not have that luxury in any other state or territory in Australia, and that is a problem for Australian consumers.

My particular interest obviously relates to the fact that I have a large fishing fleet in my electorate of Gippsland that is based in Lakes Entrance, and the Lakes Entrance Fishermen's Co-op, under general manager, Dale Sumner, have been particularly active in this space. They are not anti imports by any stretch of the imagination, but they are pro information. I will quote the general manager, Dale Sumner, in an article from last week in my local newspaper, the Bairnsdale Advertiser of 13 March. He said:

I am not against imported seafood—seafood consumption exceeds the ability to produce in Australia—however consumers are being misled on occasions, and in being misled, are expecting to buy Australian or local species, when in some instances it will be an imported option.

Labelling changes is about having the ability, when looking at the menu, to easily make the decision to buy either an imported meal, or they might be able to choose an Australian option.

I commend the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry for the work it has done in relation to this issue. The committee acknowledged that Australian consumers have a desire for quality Australian seafood, and I would simply say that consumers have a right to know. They have the right to know where their seafood has come from; they deserve to have confidence in a product. If they are choosing to pay a premium for the Australian grown or the Australian harvested wild catch, that is their decision to make as a fully-informed customer. I encourage the states and territories to work with the Commonwealth on this particular recommendation. I think it is the fair thing to do for consumers. The cost to the small business sector is minimal, and we have been fortunate in this case as the Northern Territory experience has actually given us a trial. We have seen it in action and it has been well received.

In closing, I would make one final point. I was at the Metung Hotel on Friday night, and on the board above the menu was a declaration from the Metung Hotel proprietors that all the seafood that was sold on their menu was from either Lakes Entrance or sourced from the Melbourne wholesale seafood markets, and consumers loved it. They loved knowing where their product was coming from.

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

It was good food, and the manager and owner of the Metung Hotel, David Strange, will be happy to—

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

The member for Hunter is incorrigible in encouraging me to talk about other issues relating to the Metung Hotel, one of the finest hotels in Gippsland. It is located on Bancroft Bay. The member for Hunter is most welcome at any stage in his efforts to unseat me in Gippsland. I know I am part of his marginal seat campaign; I am sure he is going to be down there at some stage. I will take great delight in taking the member for Hunter out to the Metung Hotel. He can enjoy the fresh local seafood. We may even consume some Hunter Valley wines.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to speak in relation to this report: A clearer message forconsumers. Before I make some observations about the contents of the report, can I associate myself and Australian Labor with the observations made by the member for Gippsland about the disposition of the company Patties. The member for Hunter and I had the opportunity of a meeting with the chief executive officer and other representatives from Patties, and we know that they are taking their response to the outbreak of hepatitis A, which was thought to be linked to frozen berries imported by their company, very seriously. In many respects, throughout the course of this crisis they were often well ahead of the government in their response to what needed to be done in the interest of public health and safety. On behalf of Australian Labor and the member for Hunter, I associate us with the observations of the member for Gippsland.

The member for Gippsland also made some comments in relation to recommendation 7 of the report and, in the course of that, enticed us to visit a hotel in his electorate. I am sure the hotel is excellent! But the effort to ensure recommendation 7 is implemented—that is the recommendation going to seafood labelling—is probably best directed inside the coalition's own party room, because we know that this is a matter that the National Party took to the last election in good faith and a matter that is very dearly held by National Party members. The only obstacle I can see to that recommendation, the National Party's policy pre the election and having the law changed in relation to that is inside the government's own party room. Yes, it is important that we talk about it in this place, but the focus and the direction of activity ought be by the government itself in delivering what was a National Party promise before the election.

The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry's report on country-of-origin food labelling was tabled in October last year. I welcome the fact that the government has reintroduced the matter in the chamber today so that members have the opportunity to talk about it in more detail. Obviously, the issue has been bubbling away for a long time, and the recent outbreak of hepatitis A, as I have mentioned before, has kicked this issue along a bit. But it is important that we take both a logical and a rational approach to the issue of food labelling. It is not just what is on the packet that matters; it is the quality and the safety of the food inside that matters. Sticking a picture of Skippy on the front is not going to secure or guarantee the quality of the food inside. We have to have all the right resources and all the right links in place in the food supply chain to ensure that what we are serving up to our kids at home or what we are eating in a restaurant is of sufficient quality.

Australians are entitled to know that their food is safe. They should also be able to identify where there food is from. A slew of reports, dating back over a decade now, have pointed out the deficiencies in our food-labelling system. If the matter were easy to address, it probably would have been addressed already. There are some obstacles. But I think, as the member for Hunter pointed out, that, with sufficient goodwill and the right level of bipartisanship in the chamber, those obstacles can be cleared, which is in the public interest.

We know that there is keen public attention on food labelling at the moment—an opportunity to move. This is an opportunity to ensure we are putting in place the solutions to the right problems, not the wrong solution to an identified problem. We know that there are 27 people who, it is suspected, contracted hepatitis A from a supply of frozen berries in Australia. I am not convinced, I have to say, that the answer to preventing an outbreak such as this is to put a picture of a kangaroo or not put a picture of a kangaroo on the front of a packet of frozen berries. The berries in question were clearly labelled. The answer to problems such as this lies in the security of the food chain, at heart.

As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker Prentice, the Australian food regulatory system has proper separation between the establishment of the standards for food quality and control, which is regulated by Food Standards Australia New Zealand—they set the policy, they set the standards—and the monitoring and implementation of those standards, which is done by a range of other bodies. Importantly, in the area of imported goods, that is done by the Department of Agriculture's Quarantine and Inspection Service. We have a risk rating for foods—for high-risk foods, 100 per cent of consignments are tested. Those which are classified as surveillance foods—lower-risk foods—have five per cent of the consignment tested. What has clearly been the case in the latest outbreak is that testing regime did not work. Apart from the labelling, attention needs to go to the testing regime and whether, in fact, a testing regime can be put in place which is going to be able to give Australian consumers the level of comfort and security they deserve.

It gets back to the point that it is what is inside the box that matters, not just what is on the label. Having appropriate levels of resources, having appropriate standards and being able to test for those standards through the monitoring authority should get at least an equal amount of public attention as have the labelling issues which are the subject of this report.

I am, and I am sure every member of the Labor opposition is, committed to promoting equality and the value of Australian goods. We are big supporters of the Buy Australian campaign and always have been. In that respect, we welcome the thrust of this report, which has at its heart the goal of enabling Australian consumers to identify where their goods are grown, where they are packaged and where the contents of the package come from. That is bipartisan. We have support on that.

I have to make this point: if this report is able to do one thing, it should be to put a focus on what we believe to be a cocktail of inconsistencies from those on the other side. On the one hand we are told that we should be economic nationalists when it comes to the goods we purchase at our supermarket, whether it is our wheat, our wool, our beef or our lamb; and I join with members on the other side, particularly our National Party friends, in saying we have the highest quality lamb and beef, and some of the best primary products, anywhere in the world. But I would also say they should have that same level of patriotism when it comes to the labour market. Regrettably, it is Buy Australia first when it comes to our primary products but not when it comes to our workers—because never have you seen more aggressive promoters of the 457 visa scheme. When it comes to Australian workers, regrettably, it is 'join the queue', and in that queue are a whole heap of people holding temporary working visas under the 457 scheme. We have seen evidence of that most recently in my own region. This is not good enough. If somebody is ready, willing and able to do the job, they should be there and they should be at the front of the queue.

I am willing to promote our quality but also, as the member for Hunter has pointed out recently, to do that we need to ensure we are not undermining the systems which ensure the quality. For the life of me, ripping $25 million out of a pesticide-monitoring service that was recently established to secure the quality of our food does not promote the quality supply chain of Australian-grown produce. It undermines the message of those opposite. It is what is in the packet that matters as much as what is on the front. We will support those opposite in their attempts to get a rational, logical system of food labelling, but our attention should not be drawn away from the importance of the quality of the food inside the package.

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

by leave—I have spoken on this issue and this report before and I had received advice that I would be given an opportunity to contribute today. I was very keen to do so because quite a few things have changed since the delivery of the report to the parliament in late October. I will not repeat the things I said on that day, but I would draw attention to some of the things that are in play at the moment.

I am particularly proud of this report because it is a clear, concise and relatively narrow report, and that is its strength. We focus just on country of origin food labelling. The member for Throsby mentioned the number of reports that have been commissioned before. I think they have been very broad. If we look at perhaps the best known of those, the Blewett report, it covered a wide range of labelling issues and had a very small part on country of origin food labelling. I think this is the first report that has came up with a prescriptive method of describing the goods. Every other report, as far as I am aware, said 'This should be looked into', 'There should be a labelling system' or 'There should be some visual indicators'. We went much further than that.

At its core, the most important thing in the report is that it splits the point of manufacture or the point of processing and the contents. At the moment, that is one of the great failings of the current arrangements—and I have spoken about this before. For instance, we were told that 70 per cent of the ham and bacon bought at the retail level in Australia has made in Australia written on it, but the pork is actually sourced from overseas. That is clearly not enough information for consumers. All it does is tell them where the ham or bacon was manufactured. It does not tell them where the pork came from. That just shows how distorted our current system is and why consumers are so confused and why there is such a need for change.

My committee, of which of course you are a member, Madam Deputy Speaker Landry, approached this in a way so as not to do any harm to Australian processors or Australian food producers, and in a way that was very focused on coming up with a light touch method that will actually give consumers the information they need. I, along with most of my colleagues, are very much in favour of Australia being able to operate in a free trade environment. We have been writing free trade agreements certainly through the Asian market in the last 12 months, so it is important we comply with the WTO rules. It is important that we are able to trade with those nations. But it is equally important that Australian consumers can walk into a supermarket aisle and make a decision about whether to buy Australian food and make a separate decision about whether to support Australian manufacturing—and that might be because they want to support Australian jobs or it might be because they have an inherent trust in the way that we both produce food and manufacture in Australia.

Previous to this debate, the incident of the Chinese berries associated with hepatitis A and the 27 cases in Australia is what has probably brought this to a head. But I point out to the parliament that it is related issue, but, as previous speakers have said, it is not intimately related insomuch as a different labelling system would not have given a different result in that case. That one is a biosecurity issue and that will be addressed separately, and so it should be. We should concentrate on the labelling.

I have been in this parliament now for a little over seven years. I have sat on a number of standing committees and joint committees. The committee system works very well in this parliament. They are largely bipartisan and members leave their partisan baggage at the door and try to come up with the best recommendations they possibly can for the government of the day and the parliament of Australia to try to implement. It would be fair to say that some very good reports have been written in the past and have not always received the support they probably deserve from the government of the day. So I was eagerly looking forward to the response from Minister Macfarlane, as the lead minister on this issue, after we lodged our report in October. I had had a number of conversations with him and with the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Small Business, trying to progress the government's response to make sure we got an appropriate response to our report.

I was very pleased with the reception I was getting, and there was a general indication that the government would move in this area. Of course, the Chinese berries issue has given great urgency to it. We are in the position where the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is committed to reform. I thank Minister Macfarlane very much, particularly for his approach to our committee, in that he has briefed us twice now on exactly where negotiations are up to on presenting a reform package to the cabinet. He has been very transparent with both sides of the parliament and with the Independent who sits on our committee as well. I thank the minister for that. It is very important that when these recommendations come from cabinet we are in a position where we can expect bipartisanship support—and I am very pleased with the comments by the member for Hunter and the member for Throsby that they are broadly supportive. If we get the recommendation package right, that will be good.

It has to be said there is very little that one can see that is good about the Chinese berries related hepatitis outbreak. But maybe there is a silver lining to every cloud, and this report may be the lining that propels the response of the government of the day to country-of origin food labelling over the line. If it is the catalyst for that, then at the end of the day it will be seen as the seminal event that got us moving as a parliament and made us respond to what has been a consumer issue for decades.

We did chance our arm in the report and put some descriptors up. I will not go through those, because I did that in my previous speech. Those descriptors are the subject of some negotiation in the working group at the moment. They will not be exactly the same as they are in the report, but broadly they will be very close. We also recommended there be a visual descriptor. We did not chance our arm on coming up with that. But there will be a visual descriptor, and it is highly likely to include the Made in Australia campaign. We have been having some conversations with them about this. As the member for Throsby said, putting a kangaroo on the packet will not make any difference to the product, but that particular logo, if that is where we finally land, does have worldwide respect. There is quite a bit of IP invested in it.

This will be a great result for our local industries. They may not understand how much of a difference it will make, but this last berry contamination will not be the only food issue that we have in the coming years. I must point out that we have had food issues with Australian suppliers too, so we are not perfect and we should be careful. It will put a premium on Australian food not just in Australia but worldwide, because there are other nations that are looking very closely now at their food chain supply lines—at their integrity.

I would like to thank the deputy chair, the member for Hotham; and my committee, the members for Durack, O'Connor, Makin, Hunter, Capricornia, Barker, Indi and Wannon, for their work on this report. It is well overdue. It comes after decades of vacillation. It is the right report at the right time. As I have said to some people, sometimes you are the little sparrow sitting on the fence and a shaft of sunlight comes out and shines on you. It is the case with this report, A clearer message for consumers, that we are the sparrows sitting on the fence. We have the right package at the right time, and I thank the government for its consideration of it.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of A clearer message for consumers: report on the inquiry into country of origin labelling for food. Before I do—and not just because he is here in the chamber—I acknowledge the hard work the committee chair, the member for Grey, put into this report. I think it is fair to say that he attacked this work with all the industry of a cereal farmer from the west coast of South Australia. Quite frankly, it was a privilege to be a member of the committee working on this report.

When I came to this place, I was determined to be involved in reform. We give the best of us when we are undertaking reform. The committee processes, as has been observed by the member for Grey, can sometimes be cumbersome. They can sometimes be disconnected from formal outcomes. But in this case—coincidently, for me, the first report that I have had the pleasure of working on—we are seeing real change being implemented at what, I think it is fair to say, is breakneck speed.

Some of that is appropriately acknowledged as a response to the issues that have arisen as a result of what others have referred to as the 'berries case'. But, equally, some of this reform and the need to take this reform is a product of the situation that consumers find themselves in. Sitting and listening to the evidence that was provided from consumer groups, from consumers themselves and from departmental officials, I had an immediate flashback to episodes of Yes, Minister. I remember saying to some of those giving evidence, 'I hear what you're saying. Thankfully, five years of legal training and a career in the law enables me to understand what you're saying; but what you don't understand, with respect, is the consumer doesn't understand what you are saying, nor the architecture that sits around the current country-of-origin labelling laws that we have in this country.'

If you were to distill the work we did in this report to one fundamental tenet, it is this: the average consumer of average intelligence entering the average supermarket on an average day needs to be able to quickly determine the country of origin from which the product they seek to purchase hails. It is a fairly basic principle. In my view, the importance of it is significant and it can be measured in this way. I believe the Australian consumer is motivated to support Australian industry. Given that I represent a rural constituency, I believe they are motivated to support Australian producers. But they can only do that if they do it in an informed setting, in an informed matrix. In my view, they are prepared to pay a premium—in some cases it might be a modest premium; in others it might be a significant premium—for that decision to support Australian processors and growers.

But what we have currently—and it should be noted that this is report No. 13 over the course of 12 years on this very same subject—is an architecture which does anything but inform the average consumer of average intelligence. Indeed, I consistently made the point during the hearings that in my view the system is currently being gamed—not to inform consumers, but quite frankly, to hoodwink them. We see that in some of the visual presentations you see on goods that are for sale. Having determined that the fundamental driver of the work we were doing was to ensure a more informed consumer, then the question became: are the current safe harbours appropriate? The committee came to a fairly quick view that they are not; and they are not in the sense that they do not purvey to the consumer an accurate assessment.

I thought, although it did not win the day, that we needed to move away from labels that differentiated between 'product of' and 'made in', because I think that creates its own confusion. In any event, we needed to be more prescriptive about country-of-origin labelling, and that is in recommendation 1, which has been taken up, as you have heard, Madam Deputy Speaker Landry, by the minister for industry.

The member for Throsby indicated that this will not solve problems with food safety. No-one is proposing that it will. If there were a silver bullet for this issue, we would have fired it a long time ago—and, when I say 'we', I mean this parliament and I do not mean it in any partisan sense. Either side of politics, if they had found that silver bullet, would have fired it a long time ago. But there is no such silver bullet. To be fair, this was a report about country-of-origin labelling and a clearer message, so it needs to be understood in that context. I appreciate that this debate has been carried forward by the berries issue, but, to be fair to the work of the committee, the scope of our investigation was narrowed to that question of giving a clearer message to consumers. To that extent, I agree with the member for Throsby that we need to do all we can to ensure that the food we consume in Australia is safe. I think it was the member for Mallee who indicated to me recently that it is not a question of ensuring all food is safe but, rather, that it is as safe as practicable. I may well be verballing him, but that was effectively the content of our discussion.

In the time I have remaining in this debate, I want to address the other recommendations briefly. On this question of an informed consumer I think it is critical that, in line with recommendation 3, we increase the scrutiny of products that use 'misleading Australian symbols, icons and imagery'. This is the gaming I talked about previously. It is of little benefit, in my view—indeed, it is counterproductive—for products that are grown in or made in other countries and imported to this country to be accompanied by very large iconic Australian images, such as koalas, gums and those sorts of things.

The introduction of a visual descriptor is very important, and that is recommendation 4. I think increasing the consumer's ability to grab a packet of food, identify a common visual descriptor and make a quick assessment is the best, easiest and most efficient way to allow that decision to be made, as it needs to be—and it is certainly the case in my household—when you are juggling the responsibilities of having children and incredibly time poor, as we all are.

The other recommendation that I wanted to deal with is recommendation 7, on the Northern Territory's country-of-origin labelling of seafood. It came as a shock to me, as it did to many members of the committee, that 70 per cent of the seafood we consume in restaurant settings in this country is imported. I think the confusion is because we ordinarily think protein, such as lamb and beef, will be Australian, because for economic reasons it generally is. That is not the case with seafood, particularly not with the seafood we consume in restaurants. So it was very important that the committee recommended that the Northern Territory's regime, which requires restauranteurs to include details of where the fish were sourced from, be considered by COAG. I do think it needs to be considered. It was certainly a bridge too far for the committee, in the work we did, to implement that. As someone who has world-leading aquaculture and fishing in his electorate I can see the benefits, and as an Australian consumer, quite frankly, I would like to know. Thank you.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to 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.