Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

The hypocrisy of the Labor Party in moving this amendment to the second reading motion is typical of their outdated view on governance, which relies on boards being filled with people based on their positions as opposed to boards appointed based on skills and expertise. The government will not be supporting this amendment. The decision to change the nomination process for the FSANZ board was not a decision of the minister; it was a decision of the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation, which consists of ministers from Victoria, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Commonwealth and New Zealand. The member for Throsby might like to reflect on the fact that his Labor colleagues South Australian minister Jack Snelling, ACT minister Simon Corbell and the Victorian minister Jill Hennessy agreed with the proposed changes. Rather than playing politics with this bill, maybe he should speak to his Labor colleagues.

Any changes to this legislation not agreed to by the forum would breach our international obligations with the New Zealand government under the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand concerning a Joint Food Standards System—the food treaty. To date, New Zealand has been consulted and has agreed to changes throughout the process of the drafting of this bill. Again, we see Labor attempting to block this bill even though their Labor state and territory colleagues agreed that the change needed to happen.

In regard to Mr Jones's comments surrounding the Health Star Rating, under the leadership of this government so far we have 54 companies signed up to HSR and over 1,500 products on the shelves. Just this week we have seen two major companies—Kellogg's and Nestle—reformulating their food because of this government's voluntary scheme. Kellogg's reformulated their recipe for Nutri-Grain to go from two stars to four stars. Nestle reformulated 10 of its snack and muesli bars, reducing salt by 63 per cent, sugar by 32 per cent and fat by 16 per cent.

I also make the point to Mr Jones that phase 2 of the education campaign for the Health Star Rating system ran from June to August and used print, online and out-of-home advertising to continue to raise consumer awareness of the HSR system and visually reinforce the campaign message of comparing similarly packaged products. Data suggests that 47 per cent of people are now highly likely to use the HSR on a regular basis, which is up from 40 per cent in April 2015. Of those who have seen any of the advertising, 37 per cent state they have used the HSR in stores and 30 per cent have tried to eat more healthily. Does this seem like the government is trying to undermine the Health Star Rating system? On the contrary, we are successfully implementing and promoting it.

I thank members for their contribution to the debate.

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