John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, you'd be familiar with the work done by the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. We've seen people import false product and cheat the Australian consumer, and the punishment is just minuscule compared to the money they've made out of the product. The amendments in this bill go a great way to solving a lot of these problems. Of course, the whole answer is—and I'm biased—to buy Australian food wherever you can. We've now got food labelling. Senator Brown is perhaps not overly keen about the country-of-origin labelling system. I pursued that years ago in the pig industry, when we allowed the importing of meat from Canada, Denmark and such places. People were hoodwinked by false branding which said 'manufactured in Australia', when in actual fact it was processed in Australian from imported pig meat. People thought they were buying Australian-grown meat, but they weren't.

So this bill, through these amendments, will tighten immensely the rules on importing food and make sure that it's processed cleanly and in a healthy fashion—properly, with contaminants removed and also the risk of illness from food poisoning removed. Hence it will be a lot safer for our consumers, and that's the whole thing. But remember that the best way to eat good food is to buy Australian.

Debate interrupted.