Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will talk about food labelling this morning. I am quite convinced I will not do justice to the topic because there are enormous issues and so many different dimensions to food labelling. There are the issues surrounding country of origin and there are issues surrounding things such as traffic-light labelling, animal-friendly labelling, cosmetic labelling and genetically modified food labelling. It is a very big issue that covers so many different dimensions, and it is something that I do not think we have got right here in Australia.

We have had food standard laws since 1991 and these relate to where the food was made, produced or grown—food needs to be labelled, and it needs to state where the food was manufactured or packaged. Really that does not give consumers in Australia confidence. I have been contacted by many people in my office who are very concerned about the fact that the labelling system is very confusing. 'Made in Australia' could mean that all the ingredients were sourced overseas but the product was packaged in Australia. They do not have the confidence that the food they are buying is actually made in Australia. Australian consumers overwhelmingly favour locally produced products and there have been many surveys that show this. This is mainly because they have confidence in the food that is grown in our country. They have confidence that food adheres to strict food-testing procedures. They are pretty confident that food that is manufactured and produced in Australia is suitable for human consumption.

We have had numerous examples of situations where food has been produced overseas and packaged in Australia and has led to people believing that the food they were purchasing was Australian-grown and produced. We only have to look at the issues around the berries and the hepatitis, earlier this year, to see the degree of confusion in this area. Ministers Macfarlane and Joyce undertook to look at this issue and come up with some recommendations but as yet nothing has changed.

The other aspect was looked at in the Blewett review. It recommended that consumers needed more information and that industry had a need for more flexibility and minimal regulatory burden and government objectives in the area of individual and public health. So there are some conflicting issues when it comes to food labelling. The report recommended that the government introduce a national food labelling bureau—which did not happen; consumer protections should be a higher priority for government agencies—I think that Australian consumers are pushing for this to be a higher priority; and that there should be a voluntary code of practice.

In 2007, the parliament inquired into obesity. We learnt and heard from a number of people that advocated the need for better labelling around the nutritional value and 'traffic light' labelling—issues such as added sugar, added fat, vegetable oils. Even palm oil was a big issue that was identified as one that needs to be looked at in labelling. I call on the government to actually look at the labelling and come up with some sensible laws.