Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

In response to that, I note that the opposition was in government for 12 years. I spent a lot of time sitting on the other side of the chamber. When we came into government I became the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing. I had responsibility for food and labelling, and I remember many conversations I had with Senator Siewert over that time about the problems that we have with labelling in this country, and it was I who established the review. So you had 12 years to do something about labelling of food, and you did nothing. All of a sudden now we have this big change of heart that means that we are going to have a special labelling regime for palm oil, but all of those other issues that people have talked to us about—need for clarity in labelling, ingredient lists and all of those issues—we are not going to deal with today, according to the opposition. We are going to deal with palm oil, which is an important thing to do, but you had 12 years on the government benches to do something about labelling, and it was only when Labor came into power that we started the process of getting a better labelling system in this country.

I accept Senator Siewert's concern about time. If it had happened about 10 years ago, it might have been fixed by now.