Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I share the concerns of Senator Siewert and the Australian Greens in relation to the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Amendment (Forum on Food Regulation and Other Measures) Bill 2015. The future of Australian agriculture, one of our great growth industries, is food production. Our clean, green image and high standards mean we can export our clean, green products around the world and of course consume them right here, rather than having products of an inferior standard coming from imports. There are some imports where I have concerns about antibiotics, E. coli and the like, and I think that our current system of screening those products is not adequate.

I also want to raise sovereignty as a preliminary issue. Back in 2012, the then Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Tony Abbott, supported a bill that I put up for palm oil labelling. We know that that is very significant in terms of both environmental grounds and the impact on orangutans in Indonesia and Malaysia in particular. The bill simply sought to provide information for consumers as to whether a product had palm oil in it or not and whether it was sustainably sourced palm oil. The coalition, to their absolute credit, when they were in opposition supported that bill. It passed the Senate and languished in the House of Representatives. The reason given for the coalition expressing concerns about pushing forward with that bill was that, under the FSANZ regulatory framework, we needed to get the permission of the Kiwis—of the New Zealand government, the New Zealand parliament—in respect of that.

I think that if the Australian parliament passes legislation on food labelling we should not have to go to another country to get their permission to tick off whether we want to implement those laws for our citizens. I think one of the fundamental flaws of FSANZ, of the framework, is this requirement, this right of veto that one country has over another. If the New Zealanders want to have a particular system of food labelling or to have a particular law for, say, palm oil labelling, we should not be able to veto it, and vice versa. I think there is a very real issue about Australia's sovereignty, and I think we have gone down the wrong path by allowing another country to veto the most basic laws about food labelling and giving information to Australian consumers. That is something that ought to be on the agenda and that we ought to revisit because we have made a mistake. As a nation, we have been blindly following free trade dogma and in the process have given away our sovereignty on something as basic and fundamental as food labelling and food certification.

This bill makes changes to the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act, the FSANZ Act, to change the way the board is selected and to change the name of the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council to the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation—quite a mouthful. This bill also seeks to change the composition of the FSANZ board and the way board members are appointed, and I share Senator Siewert's concerns about that.

I think that I too cannot support this bill in its current form. It is going in the wrong direction from what the overwhelming majority of Australians want. Australians want to have a sensible, robust, food-labelling regime that protects Australian consumers and enhances the reputation and the growth prospects of the food industry and food producers in this country.

These measures in the bill may seem straightforward on the face of it, but, together with changes to how genetically modified crops are defined and the circumstances in which the Gene Technology Regulator is notified of a new GM product, and removing the requirement that new food standards be published in state newspapers, for instance, they give me serious concerns about the intent of this bill. While I do not agree with all of the concerns of Friends of the Earth about this bill, I agree with them that the government's explanatory memorandum does not set out a clear justification for the changes in the bill and that it does not appear to have done much in the way of consultation with the states and New Zealand. This is not a good way to go about changes to the food standards body for Australia and New Zealand since 1991.

As I said, I think in some respects we are worse off. We could still have cooperation with our closest friends, the New Zealanders, but that does not mean we should give away our rights to sovereignty. We could have a body in place that says we cooperate and exchange information. But one country should not veto the other when it comes to these food standards. This is a body about which I have expressed misgivings in the past.

Last year, the government rejected a bill I introduced with a number of my crossbench colleagues that would have required restaurants and takeaway shops to tell customers whether its fish was imported or Australian—modelled on a very successful Northern Territory bill, a bill that would have given consumers real choice, real information and, in the process, created thousands of jobs in the aquaculture and fishing sectors in this nation. The government, whose senators had supported the bill at the committee stage, said it could not support it because of the:

… legislative consultative process currently provided for in the FSANZ Act ... enforcement is undertaken in collaboration between, and relying on, state and territory legislation in Australia as well as the New Zealand government.

My problem with FSANZ is that it can be relied upon by the government of the day as a reason not to do something as obvious as tell a restaurant or a takeaway shop's customers whether the fish they are purchasing for immediate consumption is Australian or not. Yet, in a supermarket you know where your fish comes from, but when you step outside that supermarket and go 20 metres down the road, immediately outside the supermarket, you have no idea if you are buying fish for consumption. This is an example where FSANZ has been an impediment to a sensible and practical form of consumer information that would have been good for consumers and been very, very good for employment in the seafood and aquaculture sectors in this country. This is a question of sovereignty and it is simply not good enough for the government of the day to sit on its hands and say it is against the FSANZ process. They cannot hide behind that.

Questions were also raised about the food safety regime in Australia in 2015 when imported frozen berries from China were suspected to have triggered a hepatitis A outbreak. FSANZ had deemed imported frozen berries 'low risk' and after a review ordered by the government, and also by FSANZ, it confirmed in May last year that imported frozen berries should remain as low risk and only be subject to occasional testing. No further action was taken. This is the agency to which this bill seeks to make changes, but it is not making the right changes. I think that these are retrograde changes.

Managing Australian food safety and food labelling is a sovereign power of the Australian government and the FSANZ Act in its current form has set up a regime which actually takes away from Australian sovereignty. I think this bill in its current form will make it much worse. I now go to the details of the bill before the Senate.

The bill removes the definition of a genetically modified organism, GMO, and GM product, and removes the currently strict requirement that FSANZ notify the Gene Technology Regulator of any new food regulatory measure relating to a food that contains a GMO or GM product. I can see why groups such as Friends of the Earth Australia have suggested that this looks like deregulation of GMOs by stealth, and I support the precautionary principle in relation to this. We need to be very cautious about what the impact of these changes will be. I also respect the right of those farmers who want to have GMO-free crops because there is, for instance, a marketing advantage in Japan and in Europe in relation to those crops.

I think that the definition being removed is quite broad. It states:

… any technique for the modification of genes or other genetic material.

It is the same definition as in the Gene Technology Act 2000. Compared to the definition of GMO in the Food Standards Code, which is part of FSANZ and set to be updated in March next year, it is much broader:

… recombinant DNA techniques that alter the heritable genetic material of living cells or organism.

Now, it is not at all clear to me that the definition is robust enough to capture the latest GMO technologies and, if so, then I have real problems accepting the bill in its current form because it does away with the earlier definition. On the face of it, the existing definition has the benefit of being in plain language that is easily understood.

Other aspects of the bill also suggest a lessening and loosening of accountability. FSANZ will no longer have to publicise its food standards in the press, rather only putting them on its website. This is a fundamental roll-back in a simple transparency measure. It should not be in the bill, in my view.

Finally, the loosening of the processes around selection of the FSANZ board, while making it perhaps more streamlined and less onerous for the government, has not received the support of the Public Health Association of Australia—surely, a body that the FSANZ board should have the support of. The problem that the Public Health Association has identified is that the categories for the different board members are just too loosely defined in the fields of science, public health and the food industry. As the Public Health Association of Australia says, the risk is that the FSANZ board could become one-sided. The association states:

The decision-makers within FSANZ, the Board members, play a critical role in influencing the food supplies in Australia and New Zealand, and hence are key decision-makers in relation to public health. It is therefore essential that Board members have strong backgrounds in public health and nutrition, said the … Association.

In conclusion, I cannot support the bill in its current form. I will not oppose it going to the committee stage. I think it is important that we debate these important issues, but I believe this bill waters down accountability around GMOs in this country and opens up the board to members with less of the expertise it needs to do its job. Ultimately, one of the great growth industries in this country is our clean, green reputation in food technology and food production, and I think that this bill will arguably go against a great growth industry of which this nation can be justifiably proud.