Mr GRIFFIN (10:17 AM) —The Australia New Zealand Food Authority Amendment Bill 2001 started its journey through this parliament as yet another example of this government's disregard for the views and the interests of the Australian public. Today I am happy to support a bill that, as a result of Labor and Democrat amendments, while not perfect, more closely reflects the Australian community's requirement for a food regulator that is independent of political and industry agendas and firmly places the protection of public health and safety at the centre of its objectives.

The purpose of this bill is to implement changes to the way food regulation is dealt with in Australia following a review of food regulation and the signing of a food regulation agreement between the states, territories and the Commonwealth. The genesis of this change was a review of food regulation, known as the Blair review, that was conducted way back in 1998. The final recommendations of the Blair review were only seen by the public then in draft form before disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole for more than two years and reappearing as a piece of flawed legislation in February this year.

By its own admission, during the `black hole' years the department of health did not bother consulting in any serious fashion with stakeholders, and over the last five months there have been attempts by this government and the department to justify this lack of consultation by referring to what happened during the Blair process. Labor does not accept this excuse and nor do the stakeholders. What was recommended in Blair in 1998 and what was spat out of the bureaucratic process in 2001 were two entirely different proposals and, as we have seen as a result of the Senate inquiry instigated by Labor, the 2001 proposal was completely unacceptable to major consumer and public health organisations.

Briefly, the major issues and concerns were: the potential to have the board of what is supposed to be an independent scientifically based food safety regulator potentially stacked by food industry representatives; a proposal for the ministerial council to lose its power to amend proposals and applications put before it by the FSANZ board; a proposal to allow food standard applications to become law by default if the ministerial council did not respond in 60 days; a ministerial council that may end up being controlled by lead ministers from portfolios other than the health portfolio, which could result in real and perceived conflicts of interest with the regulator's objective of protecting public health and safety; restrictions on where public information would be made available; and lack of a precautionary approach to assessing food standards.

Further to the Labor instigated Senate inquiry and following additional stakeholder consultation conducted by Labor, a number of amendments were moved in the Senate, and I am pleased that the government has decided to accept most of them. The Labor amendments that strengthen the transparency, independence and science and public health focus of Australia's prime food safety regulator result in the following: the ministerial council will maintain its power to amend as well as accept or reject applications and proposals put to it by the FSANZ board; proposals and applications put forward by the FSANZ board will not become law unless a majority of jurisdictions indicate support in writing to the board; the precautionary approach to assessment of food standards as outlined in the WTO's sanitary and phytosanitary agreement has been added to the objectives of the act; members of the FSANZ board will now serve for a fixed term to provide certainty and to prevent any politically motivated attempts to interfere with board membership; strong conflict of interest provisions have been added which prevent either the chairperson of the board or the CEO from having worked for or having had pecuniary interests in a body corporate involved in food production or manufacture for the two years prior to the appointment; all board members must now agree to post any personal material interests they may have on the FSANZ web site; and public information must now be made available in major national newspapers as well as on the Internet.

In addition, Labor and Democrat amendments have significantly improved the science and public health base of the board and have ensured that it cannot be captured by industry interests or its membership influenced by political preference. As a result, the new board comprises 12 members of which there are seven mandatory positions, including one from the National Health and Medical Research Council and a third New Zealand member representing an area of public health or science, five general positions of which three must come from public health, consumer and science areas and two from industry, government and regulation. The minister can appoint board members only from a pool of nominations put forward by relevant public and professional organisations.

Finally, I understand that the government will be making a commitment today and that, as I heard from the minister earlier, the Prime Minister will write to all state and territory heads of government proposing that the intergovernmental Food Regulation Agreement be amended to specify that the lead minister on the ministerial council will be the health minister for all jurisdictions. On that basis, Labor has agreed to drop its amendments in relation to disallowable instruments. It is Labor's belief that states will embrace this change—that has been the indication so far—and we would urge them to deal with the issue as soon as possible.

This is a major victory for all Australians, who can now be confident that our food safety regulator will continue to be guided at the highest level by health rather than industry, trade or agriculture interests. As Labor has said throughout this debate, at a time when Europe is in crisis over issues relating to food safety as a result of regulation that has been driven by agricultural and trade rather than health imperatives, we should be moving to strengthen rather than water down the health focus of our regulation. I think the legislation in its amended form does just that and will give the Australian public greater confidence in the food that they and their families eat. This in itself will have very positive flow-on effects to the food industry in this country.

In conclusion, while this amended bill is worthy of support, it is a sad indictment of this government that such substantive changes have had to be forced through. Had there been sufficient open consultation with stakeholders throughout the entire development process, we might have started out where we have now ended up, and saved a lot of time and energy in the interim. On the basis of the government's acceptance of the amendments put forward by Labor and the Democrats, and the agreement reached to support the amendments proposed by the government today, I am now happy to commend this bill to the House.