Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The issues around palm oil have become quite well-known to the members of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee. I take the point that until we had the series of references to our committee there was not a great deal of knowledge. We had seen some information. Naturally, we had seen the large campaign by the Zoos Australia network. I want to particularly commend in this contribution the extraordinary, educative role that Zoos Australia at their Taronga, Perth and Melbourne outlets have run to raise awareness of environmental issues that have been put forward as part of the debate.

I think all of us have seen the range of extraordinarily cute postcards with a particularly fetching orangutan. I have to admit I have forgotten the name of the orangutan, but it was given a name and people knew it. It was a very personal, very confronting process in raising the issues of the need to save wildlife, the concerns of rainforest deforestation and the ongoing agricultural production in Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries. This was a particularly important part of the evidence we received.

I want to put on record the range of information we received from people who attended zoos to see what was going on. I also want to pay credit to a young woman who came to our public hearing. Her name is Chloe Nicolosi. She came along because she had a particular view, after going to the zoo, on saving the orangutan. I want to commend the role that Chloe played, because she had the courage to put forward the issue and also the courage to work with her friends at school and her local community to raise awareness, which we all need to have, about wildlife protection—and particularly, in this case, the protection of the orangutan through the Don't Palm Us Off campaign.

I know Senator Siewert mentioned that in her contribution, and I do not think anyone who was at our hearing was unaware of the genuine need to look at these issues and to come up with some response across the world. Whether—and this is a very important point—the passing of this legislation is actually the best way of doing that is a debate for this chamber. But the important thing is that the discussion must happen and that environmental protection is something that the Australian community find inter­esting and that they should know about.

In our recommendations at the end of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee report, we stated that, throughout the whole process, we had evidence from a range of organisations, individuals and people on the issues of health, effective production, labelling and environment protection. But, as we said in the concluding elements of our report, for every argument that we received there was a corresponding argument for the other side. I know that a is a common situation in this place when we are taking forward important issues. Nonetheless, the committee felt that we had to put on record that in this inquiry you could go through and compare the arguments were raised and the contrasting issues. What was important was that people wanted to have their say and that they had concerns. As Senator Siewert has said, the issues of food labelling are important to our community and are becom­ing more so. I will go on to talk about the various issues of the current legislation.

One of the more interesting aspects of the evidence received was that people wanted clear labelling. I take that point; I am one of those people who tries to read extensively the contents of the products that I am purchasing. It is not that easy when you are looking at grapes, but, nonetheless, when you are going through the supermarket lanes and looking at the range of options before you, you see that a lot of progress has been made to date.

I know that Senator Siewert has talked about her frustration with the time that these changes take, and there is an element of truth in that. To go through a process of change does take time. But, for food products in Australia—and New Zealand, but I am talking about Australia in particular at the moment—there is much more interest in and much more availability of food labelling on packaging. Sometimes—and this is my own point, not taken up in this piece of legislation—it is almost impossible because trying to look at that the small print on a food product is a challenge in itself. Apart from that, there has been progress.

One of the interesting pieces of evidence was that people actually say that labelling is important to them. People say they want to have clear labelling of content. But does it change their purchasing processes? We had evidence to our inquiry that there are surveys from major chains on this point. Yes, people do want access to food labelling, and that is their right. But I think there needs to be much more work done in the Australian community on looking at the effectiveness of the progress in people's patterns of purchase and whether they understand clearly what the need for change is. Certainly evidence we received form the Heart Foundation and various agencies was particularly clear about the health impacts of this legislation proposal—we need to have clear labelling in terms of health. That was an issue that I think we in this place need to work on with our communities.

The Preventive Health Agency that the government has developed needs to make sure that the full message is known, as is being demanded by this legislation, about the issues of palm oil. We had significant evidence about the issues around palm oil—its level of fat and the degree of harm in that fat. That came out consistently in evidence from people looking at the health impacts—that palm oil is a substance that can have particular health impacts. That was raised, and I draw attention to the ongoing work of the Heart Foundation in this matter. That is an issue that we need to consider. The evidence that came to us in our committee looked mainly at health aspects, the orangutan link and environmental responsibilities.

We took some time in the committee to look at the current food protection system in Australia. It is not an easy one. As Senator Siewert has said, on many occasions in our Senate estimates and community affairs committee, and also in some debate in this place, we have gone through the way that the current food protection system works. The core aspect of our current food protection system is that it is a cooperative arrangement involving the states and territories of our country. It is not a federal process. In fact, it is clearly defined that it is not a federal role to go in over the top and direct. This process works through the ministerial councils to ensure that there is agreement on and commitment to our food labelling and food protection processes—understanding that the core responsibility is with the states but that, naturally, the federal agencies have a role in coordinating and ensuring that there is understanding.

We take that situation extraordinarily seriously, and we had evidence from a number of state governments who put forward their view that they strongly believe that, in whatever process we have, recom­mendations are able to go through the minis­terial council process so they are worked through effectively and so that the legislation that feeds out—possibly a wrong choice of verb there, considering the issue we are talking about!—of the decisions that are made on food standards are then implemented through legislation at the state level. The issue that we have with federal intervention of this type—done for the very best purposes, I strongly believe—is: how are we actually going to make it work and maintain the cooperative and effective arrangements that we have?

The ministerial council is made up of ministers from each state and territory—absolutely—the Commonwealth and, because of a particular cross-country arrange­ment, with our friends from New Zealand. I suppose, considering the discus­sion we had recently, I should call them our family members from New Zealand. It is important that we have that link through Food Standards Australia New Zealand, which is the independent statutory authority set up by the Australian government under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991.

This cooperative arrangement in our legislation has the role of developing and maintaining the food standards which make up the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. That document is freely available and at times in our community affairs process we have turned to that to find out exactly what is agreed in our current process. The code itself—I know this is something people have some difficulties with—has no legal effect in its own right. The Food Regulation Agreement between the states, the territories and the Commonwealth provides that the states and territories will adopt or incorporate into state or territory law the standard which FSANZ develops. I know Senator Siewert has expressed her frustration with this process, but it is the way that we, not only in Australia but also in New Zealand, can reach an agreement which means that we have the best engagement and the opportunity to ensure that there is consistency and involvement in the process. In the first day of evidence in the community affairs inquiry Mr Steve McCutcheon, the Chief Executive Officer of FSANZ, made the point on record:

I think in the context of providing more information to consumers through food labels that is very much around health and safety, and the objectives of our act make that clear. Whatever mechanism would be taken to give effect to the objectives of this bill—

the bill we are talking about today—

I think we would probably struggle to meet the benefit-cost test that would be applied under the Council of Australian Governments best practice regulation guidelines, in terms of the cost that would be imposed on industry to put in place the systems that would be required to underpin label statements, and then the benefits of that for the consumers who were interested in that information.

I draw people's attention to the full submission of FSANZ if they want to look at all the actions, but that statement encapsu­lates, for me, the way the current system works—it actually draws in the states and territories and then it works with the various stakeholders, for whom there are public consultation processes to ensure that we have agreement. It does take time, and that is a point that we should all consider in looking to the future, but we need to work within the system we have to come up with the best possible arrangement.

In working within this process our committee has adopted a continuing question­ing model, and that is extra­ordinar­ily important to ensure that people in the community know that their voices are able to be put into this process, which goes back into government to ensure that we have a system that is public and transparent. We use that term all the time—it needs to be transparent so people understand the way things operate and can see what the objectives of the process are.

The object of the FSANZ Act is to ensure a high standard of public health protection throughout Australia and New Zealand by means of the establishment and operation of a joint body to be known as Food Standards Australia New Zealand. FSANZ has four goals: to achieve a high degree of consumer confidence in the quality and safety of food produced, processed, sold or exported from Australia or New Zealand; to be an effective, transparent and accountable regulatory framework within which the food industry can work efficiently; to provide adequate information relating to food to enable consumers to make informed choices; and to establish common rules for both countries and promote consistency between domestic and international food regulatory measures without reducing the safeguards applying to public health and consumer protection. The core aspects are health, consumer protection, public health and safety.

There was some discussion in the community affairs committee about whether the palm oil issue fell into any of these areas. Once again, as I said earlier, for every argument that was put up there was a contradictory argument, but I tended to fall on the side of saying that palm oil as a health matter should be further considered through our process. Most people in this place, and certainly the community affairs committee, are aware of the extensive review of this area led by former health minister Neal Blewett. That review brought down its report earlier this year. There was a large number of recommendations, and I truly hope that many people who are interested in this area have taken the time to look at the Blewett report, which is a significant document, and the large number of recommendations.

One of the recommendations of the report, which has been referred to cabinet for consideration—because it is a very important area and an important document—is that there should be consideration of palm oil labelling being identified in its own right. I was able to look at some of the submis­sions—many of the people who came to the community affairs committee had also made submissions through the Blewett process—and look at the issue of fat in palm oil. That was the argument Dr Blewett took up in his recommendations, and certainly when we were pulling together the community affairs committee report in response to Senator Xenophon's bill and Senator Brown's bill, we said that, as there had been this fulsome—many people involved in that review would say extremely fulsome—review of our system conducted under Neal Blewett and those recommendations were being considered by Cabinet, that would be the appropriate way to move forward on the issue. Where we go is then a decision for this place.

It is important that the community understand that this has not been an empty space; that the government has taken seriously its responsibilities to ensure that we maintain the system that I have read out, that is enshrined in the act—looking at the transparency, looking at the responsibilities around public health and accountability. The government has certainly not moved away from its responsibility to keep that system as an effective and worthy process within our country. We have had this national review and we are working through the process. We need to ensure that the health issues raised by the community through our committee are taken up in our food standards process. There was further discussion of whether, at this stage in our food regulation program, the issues of environmental protection—and those issues are absolutely important and worthy and no-one says they should not be considered—are taken up by the various terms in the current legislation that I have already put into the debate today. That was something that many consumers felt needed to be put forward, and they brought that information to our committee. But I think it is something that needs more consideration.

We on the community affairs committee took good evidence from retailers and producers and also industry groups on voluntary labelling of products. The content for health purposes was spelt out in one area, but there was also some kind of sticker or promotional agreement that talked about the environmental processes. This was to take these concerns to the market so that people could see, when making their choices about which products to buy, if it was going through the round table process. There is a round table process, to which Senator Siewert referred, on environmental sustainability—I will not have time to go into that in this contribution, but I feel sure that we will have more discussions around this issue in the future. The labelling would make that clearly known. People could then read on a product that it had palm oil in it—under the process that will be considered in the future—and whether the palm oil being used was sustainably produced. That is already used in many areas now to grab public attention and make them aware of these differences between products.

From the perspective of the community affairs committee, it was an extraordinarily valuable exercise to see that these things were considered so important by so many people in our community and that people wanted to know about how the system for food regulation worked. People wanted to have their say in the process, but they also said that they wanted to know what they would be able to do next, after this labelling is actually agreed, and I think that is something for further discussion in this place.

I think it is important to put on the record that I think our system works. Engaging effectively with the states and stakeholders and so making sure that people understand what is going on is the best possible way to ensure food safety and awareness in our community.