Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I would like to talk about something that I think is extremely important and that a lot of Australians think is extremely important, and that is the labels on our food products. For decades, Australian's have been told how important food labelling is for the economy, for workers and especially for the farmers to help people buy Australian. The reason that it is so important that we buy Australian is that it plainly makes sense. It is a simple message that everybody understands, and it also appeals to us because we want to do the right thing by our great country and the food producers here. It also appeals to us because we know how good our products are, especially our food. Our farmers are undoubtedly the best in the world and the food that they produce is the best in the world, and Australia is famous for it. Our country has one of the greatest global reputations for quality, for high standards and for integrity in our food products. One of the most important things in this country—and we should never underestimate it—is the fact that our food is safe.

Australians want to buy Australian food for all of these reasons, but for many, many years Australians have been, oh, so terribly frustrated by our food labelling system. I do not think that, so far, we have come up with a system that really tells us what we want to know about our food. As we buy, I think there is definitely a greater level of interest in the quality and the products that go into our food. But, also, I think there is a greater interest in knowing where our food has come from.

I think we have every right to know and many reasons to know what we are eating and drinking and where it comes from. That means we have every right, and many reasons, to implement a system that provides clear, simple, unambiguous information about Australian and non-Australian content in our food products. This is why the Australian government has had a positive response from Australian consumers to proposed new labelling changes that were released for public consultation last week. Since the consultation process was released, I have had an extraordinary number of constituents contact me, not only to let us know how pleased they are that we have eventually started to move forward with country-of-origin food labelling, but also because they really want to have their say about what this labelling is going to look like. They want to have their say about what they want to see on food products and how they want to be informed about what they are about to put in their mouths and the mouths of their families and their children.

I understand that there has been more that 8,500 completed surveys already since it has gone up, and the consultation only began last week. It is a great start, but 8,500 is not very many, when you consider how many people there are in Australia. I am certainly one who is going to be advocating very strongly for all Australians who are interested to have their say, so that we can once and for all get food labelling right in this country. I urge anybody who thinks that this issue is important to participate in the process and to contact their federal member, to contact the department or to go online and take part in the survey, which will inform the decision this government makes into the future about what the labelling will look like that will inform the Australian public about the food and drink they are about to consume.

The reality is that, whilst we have had a lot of talk in this space, it has been a long time coming to get to the stage where we are able to have our say about food labelling, and it will be a very long time before we have another opportunity. So I think this is very important, and it is incumbent on Australians who are keen to participate in this process to ensure they have their say.

There is another issue that is really worth mentioning—and this is a much discussed subject, and I cannot imagine how many inquiries have been held into the various food labelling activities of the various products, whether they be broad food labelling or whether they be specific to a commodity group. The cold hard reality is that if this were an issue that was simple to solve, I am sure it would have been solved by now. It is a very complicated issue, but over the last 12 months as this particular inquiry has been going along and we have now come up with some final recommendations that have gone to consultation, we are at the stage where we can go to consumers and ask them to approve it or to give us an idea of exactly what they want in this space.

The other issue is that, while there is a strong expectation that consumers want clear and simple labelling so that they can understand what products are in their food and where those particular food products come from, we have to balance this against the cost to food manufacturers of providing this information on their labels. The last thing we need to do in this country is to burden our businesses with unnecessary regulation, but we also need to make sure that we meet our international trade obligations. We have to be mindful that in providing the additional information for which consumers have been begging for such a long time, we have a three-way balance going on here.

I think Australians, by and by, are prepared to spend a little more on Australian food, but we must make sure that the extra money that they are prepared to spend on Australian food ends up in the pockets of the farmers and the food producers and is not just a cost impost that is passed on to us because the manufacturers have to spend more to comply with the food labelling requirements. In regard to the benefit of any additional cost that may be generated from being able to identify that the product comes from Australia, as I said, I think Australian consumers would be quite happy to aspire to eat Australian food and drink Australian beverages, simply because they know it will be safe, it will be high quality, and it will go towards supporting their fellow constituents: the farmers and food producers of this country.

The complexity of this issue is reflected in the composition of the working group established by the government to develop this new system. It has included representatives across a wide range of industries: industry, agriculture, trade, small business and the health portfolios. I would like to put on the record my congratulations to Ministers MacFarlane, Joyce, Robb, Billson and Nash for their extraordinary collaborative efforts to get this particular proposal to the stage that it is at today.

I believe that informed consumer choice is fundamentally important in a free market system, and the free market is the most efficient mechanism we have ever had to determine the value of goods, services and labour in this country and in fact in any country. Accurate, unambiguous country-of-origin labelling is going to help Australians demonstrate the value that they place on our safe, clean, green, high-quality food; how much they value helping the economy; how much they value helping our farmers; and how much they value helping the hundreds of thousands of Australian workers employed in the food and beverage industry and in the associated manufacturing industries.

We are proposing to implement the new system at a time when Australia has, I was quite surprised to learn, a $1.8 billion trade deficit in the food and beverage, grocery and fresh produce sector. Believe it or not, that is a 20 per cent improvement on the previous year, thanks to some solid export growth that seems to have been generated since we came into government, probably on the back of the fabulous free-trade arrangements that have been negotiated by this government since coming into government, in September 2013.

According to the Australian Food and Grocery Council's 2014 State of the industry report, in 2013-14 Australian grocery sector imports were valued at $14.9 billion, while our exports were valued at only $4.1 billion, which is an extremely disturbing statistic when you consider how fabulous the Australian food producers are. We are still a net exporter of food, but that is on the back of the fact that we have such huge grain exports, livestock exports and chilled meat exports. If you take those big ticket, unprocessed items out of our food exports, you end up with a situation where we have a trade deficit in this space, which I think is a very sad indictment.

These figures also demonstrate how exposed we are to the food manufacturing standards and ethics of other countries—standards and ethics which do not always meet the expectations of Australian consumers. Recent food safety incidents have provided a catalyst for this important reform, but let us not let these distract us from the fundamental reasons for undertaking it—Australians want to know where their food comes from. Again, for everyone who would like to participate in this public consultation process and complete the country-of-origin food labelling survey, I urge you to do so.