Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Nash today to questions from the opposition. The questions went to whether ministerial processes were followed, and, unfortunately, we did not receive enough answers. Potentially the minister has the opportunity to come back later and provide the Senate with the dates that Senator Wong, in particular, asked for. Senator Nash was also asked questions about the relationship between the minister's office and the Department of Health. Frankly, I found her answers to the questions from Senator Faulkner unconvincing. Serious allegations have been made, and they need to be answered. I encourage the minister to consider that.

But I will talk about the questions I asked the minister. They went to the purpose of the star-ratings website and to its removal. Let us first go to why there was going to be a star-ratings website. There was going to be a star-ratings website to assist the food manufacturing sector—which wished to adopt the voluntary food-labelling system—to go through the process of identifying what star rating their product would have. They want and need the website in order to be able to participate in the voluntary food-labelling system. The website is designed to provide consumers of manufactured food products with information about how healthy their products may or may not be. A lot of work has been done on food labelling. The work started some three or four years ago following the Blewett report and its advice to the government of the day that we should have a traffic-light system. It was not adopted by the government, and we went back to talk to the forum members—that is, the states and territories of our country and New Zealand—in order to find a system which would better serve consumers in our country.

The website was also to provide information to the community about how the star-rating system would work. It would have prepared consumers for the use of the system once manufacturers voluntarily took up the use of the star-rating system. I was very curious when the minister said that one of the reasons she took down the website is that no products on the supermarket shelves have the star-rating system. But she got the cart before the horse—in fact, we need to have the website to assist business to participate in the voluntary star-rating system.

The history of the website is long, but we are now at the point where there is agreement by state and territory ministers with responsibility for food—and by New Zealand, which participates sometimes in these discussions and sometimes not; at the moment New Zealand is watching to see whether it wants to participate as well. This forum has established a working group and is continuing into the future the assessment of the website as a tool.

I refer to the communique which was issued following the December meeting of the forum. In it, ministers indicate:

The Commonwealth Assistant Minister for Health, Senator the Hon. Fiona Nash, informed the forum that she will direct the Department of Health to broaden the cost-benefit analysis of front-of-pack labelling to include evidence-based research and extensive industry consultations in the absence of a Regulatory Impact Statement, which was not agreed to by the Forum.

This was not an agreed position of the forum; the Ministry is now working unilaterally, outside the agreed structure of coming to a position on food labelling in our country.

The other point I make is about what the public health sector want. What are they looking for? They have been campaigning for years so that we can provide consumers of manufactured food with good quality information about what they are purchasing. The system we currently have is not well taken up by consumers. We have what is called the 'daily intake guide'. (Time expired)