Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (16:00): Of all the people in this chamber and possibly the other one, I am probably one of the most familiar with the two industries that are primarily concerned with this bill: first of all the Dairy Act 2000 that this Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026 seeks to amend, in terms of the fact that I grew up on a dairy farm, and then the second and very important part of that is PrimeSafe. PrimeSafe covers a range of food entities, and we will explore those. But my grandfather, before he became an engineer, was a fourth-generation butcher, so it is something that is very dear to my heart – both the dairy industry and that contained within PrimeSafe.
When we think about the dairy industry from many years ago, it is the evolution of refrigeration that has transformed, as it has for many, our dairy industry. Many years ago on farms there was no thing called refrigeration. There were coolstores. There were thick walls. But small farms produced milk, separated the cream from the whey, fed the cream to pigs that were on farm and then sent off in the back of a truck to the local butter factory the cream to be made into butter. Then we had the evolution of milk vats and milk tankers, which were refrigerated, which facilitated and enabled further transportation of the incredibly valuable product of milk, which then was able to be taken to larger centres and larger processing plants. In my home area Murray Goulburn and Bonlac were some of the examples. Then we had pasteurisation and homogenisation, again creating a better framework for safety of that food, for durability of that food and to be able to keep it for longer and longer, which then provided the capacity for people not to have the house cow or to let milk sit for a long time but to use it in a variety of methods. Indeed the whole evolution of UHT and long-life milk has been so important for the health, the viability and the wellbeing of Victorians, of Australians and internationally. Part of the importance of this bill is around keeping international trade and keeping our extremely high quality food and produce being recognised right across the world and creating that gross domestic product for our state.
If we look, similarly, at meat production, my grandfather at Trafalgar actually – there was a very small abattoir – killed the steer, brought it into town, put it into a lead-lined coolstore and then processed it, and out it went fresh. He used to deliver meat around Trafalgar on the back of a horse-drawn carriage. This was back a long time ago now, and he used to run beside the carriage and then run in to keep fit. We are very glad for the fact that it has evolved over time. But there is still the incredible importance of delivering quality produce, processing it to an incredibly high standard, meeting those obligations and having real-life industry-led support for regulation and oversight.
We will not be opposing this bill, but we certainly will be moving a number of amendments. I can say I am not going to hurry through those amendments, because I believe that this is a very important bill and it warrants that fine discussion and consideration in committee of the whole. We want to target some amendments. We want to ensure that industry has confidence, has export integrity and has consumer transparency. This is not about blocking the reform, but it is about getting it right. Key omissions in the legislation that we see here are in relation to representation of industry on the board of the new Safe Food Victoria, prescribing consultative committees by key commodity groups, protecting fees and ensuring that the fees that are already in existence now in the separate entities can be transferred over and used by the specific commodity groups within this new framework, regulatory assets for each commodity group and defining a statutory review. Further, and this is often an interesting one, there are some tremendous plant-based protein alternatives out there – very important – and also milk and plant-based juice or nut juice. There are a variety of ways we could say that – nut beverages. We seek amendments here to make sure that there is mandatory disclosure of plant-based products, prohibition of misleading descriptors to stop that from happening, and consumer transparency. We want to ensure that people have the choice and know how this looks.
As I have said, farming right across Victoria is so very important. Dairy farmers are among Victoria’s largest export contributors. They produce 63 per cent of Australia’s milk. Think of that: 63 per cent of Australia’s milk comes from Victoria. It is one of Victoria’s most important exports. In the entire region, but particularly in Gippsland – I can be parochial – across the sector this represents families that get up before dawn, work long hours, are self-employed, are small business operators and operate under incredibly high standards of animal husbandry and animal welfare, and I want to commend so many of them.
I will digress slightly in relation to the quality, noting that my father 30-plus years ago was a dairy farmer. There is a consideration of having a low cell count. What that means is that you run a very clean dairy, you have very healthy cows and you have healthy udders, but to be in the top 10 per cent of the region for that cell count says to me – and I am very proud of it – that he was an excellent farmer and had very high welfare standards for his healthy cows overall to be in that category. Again, I say that because it is very important that Dairy Food Safety Victoria, as the dairy-only regulator, has had a very strong engagement with the sector and a proven track record. I want to put on record that in no way should this change by the government be seen to suggest that Dairy Food Safety Victoria was not doing its job. There was nothing wrong with Dairy Food Safety Victoria, and we want to carry over some of those mechanisms and some of that oversight and industry-led input and committee work as well into this new bill. In terms of PrimeSafe, it regulates meat, poultry and seafood, with deep sector expertise. These are not broken institutions, these are respected here and internationally, and I commend them for the work that they have done. And they have evolved. Certainly they have evolved over time, as I said, with technology and experience. We do not want to lose that good knowledge and that good process.
The bill establishes Safe Food Victoria and it abolishes Dairy Food Safety Victoria and PrimeSafe. The bill talks about a legislative umbrella. It also amends a number of other acts that need to be amended with the creation of Safe Food Victoria: the Dairy Act, the Food Act 1984, the Meat Industry Act 1993, the Seafood Safety Act 2003 and others as a consequence. In fact a lot of it is just tidying up as a result of this new entity. The government will say – and it is; it was in the Silver review, it is part of the Silver review – that it is about consolidating. In terms of the Silver review, it says:
Consolidation will reduce duplication, improve coordination, and streamline regulatory interactions for food businesses, while strengthening oversight across the sector. The reform aligns with the phased consolidation outlined in the Economic Growth Statement, with consultation underway.
If that all becomes true, then that is the maximum outcome that we can expect. However, we certainly are concerned, and when I say ‘we’, it is the Liberals and Nationals, and my good colleague the Shadow Minister for Agriculture Emma Kealy has done a power of work on this, and we thank her for that. She has consulted widely with the sector, and there are still many concerns that they have. As I said, the current system has had a strong reputation across the whole sector. What I would like to do is just outline some of the concerns that we will be fixing and amending in our various amendments. There is no guarantee that the new regulatory board will include representation and expertise from dairy, meat processing, agriculture or regional food production. Without mandated expertise the board risks becoming dominated by generalists, and that is what much of the feedback from the sector has said. The agricultural sector have said that they are concerned about generalist appointees rather than people with direct industry knowledge, so we want to actually embed that in the legislation. These committees that Safe Food Victoria is going to establish have not had that expertise defined in legislation.
We also want to move some amendments in relation to fees. Dairy Food Safety Victoria operates on a cost-recovery, industry-funded model, and it has built up reserves funded by dairy producers. This has been in the long term. We want to make sure that those funds are transformed and transferred over to remain, as it were, hypothecated for the dairy industry. This is a really important thing. We do not want to see, which has been the case in the government sector, and we have seen it in other areas – not in these particular industries by any stretch but in other areas – something go to consolidated revenue and be lost to the improvements and the oversight and the quality of food safety from that particular area.
The other thing that is interesting and important is that this legislation proposes additional foods, such as cell-cultivated meat, that could be regulated in the future by Safe Food Victoria. We are now well into a new millennium and new technology, and whilst it sends, philosophically, a shiver through my spine – the fact that we are going to have cell-cultivated meat, that you can grow your steak there in the lab and it can taste reasonable or otherwise; I am quite concerned about that, coming off the farm and having fresh lamb, fresh pork and fresh beef – I also understand that this world is getting more and more populated, and we need to ensure that we can nutritionally feed the population. Where I sit is that while it would be something that I would not particularly enjoy or adhere to, I understand that there is a developmental potential for that.
The government has stated also, in terms of the review fees, that they will review the fees. But I just want to put on record our concerns should they steal the fees that exist now that have been obtained by the various entities that are used but also the future fees that are used specifically for that development and for that food safety.
In terms of export risks, and I have said it in here, some of the conversations and communications around the changeover are that the dairy industry and the meat industry very much rely on international markets. They have export partners which are stable and credible, so what they are concerned about with the changeover is that this credibility may drop in terms of standards. They do not want to see that happen, so I have to put on record our concern around that.
In terms of the centralised bureaucracy, this is what we see often, but whether or not this will actually deliver what the Silver review has suggested that it might, we are concerned about a larger bureaucracy that is more distant from the industry and slower to respond to specific issues, and of course there are a lot of issues out there. Biosecurity is an incredibly important issue that we have raised in the past in this Parliament, where there has been threat of internationally borne diseases coming into the country and the need for high regulation. I understand a lot of that is in the federal sphere, but every state has its own requirement and responsibility to protect our biosecurity across the board.
There are some other factors that I will go through when I am actually doing consideration of the amendments, and I thought I would try and do that in this time rather than going into committee of the whole and doing them piecemeal. That provides us with some continuity for discussion here. As I said, the dairy industry is concerned about the changes. They are concerned that there is no guaranteed industry representation on the new board, and we will fix that with our amendments. They are concerned that consultation is not embedded in the legislation. We also hear from the Australian Meat Industry Council that risks to exports exist. They have said these commitments are fundamental to maintaining industry confidence, protecting sector-specific expertise and delivering on the government’s stated objectives.
In relation to emerging food products and labelling, as new products like cell-cultivated meat enter the market we certainly must ensure that they are properly regulated and that they contribute to the cost of that regulation. Whereas there has been in the past a fee structure from the primary producers providing that to the regulators, that is not necessarily there in this new bill, so we need to ensure that they will be properly regulated, that these new and emerging products – cell-cultivated meat, as it is called – contribute to the cost of that regulation and that the consumer is not misled or unclear in terms of the labelling. If it says meat, it should be meat, and I will go into that very clearly in the conversation around our amendments. As I said, we are not opposing the reform. There could be opportunity for improved and streamlined regulation, certainly in this situation where we have got a net debt slated, in terms of the forward estimates for 2028–29, for just shy of $200 billion and Victorians are suffering just about $1 million per hour in interest repayments. We understand the need to streamline and make efficiencies where possible, but we will be moving amendments to ensure that industry representation is on the board, to establish mandatory consultative committees, to protect industry-raised funds and to introduce a statutory review. This is a new system, this is a new entity and we need to look into that and make sure that it is achieving its objectives to strengthen protections around food labelling and to ensure new food industries pay their fair share in terms of regulation.
I just want to put on record, as I said, some of our amendments, which will hopefully streamline the process in committee of the whole. But before I do, I just want to mention one particular industry group called Cattle Australia, whose chief executive officer Dr Chris Parker said:
Lab-grown proteins must be held to the same food safety, environmental and labelling standards as real products like beef …
I thank them. They went on:
The processes and ingredients used to produce these products are often ‘commercial in confidence’ …
They are secret spy, new ingredients.
A member interjected.
Melina BATH: Well, they are commercial in confidence, so they could be anything. We need to make sure, for human consumption, for markets, for people and for families who might want to and like to use these, that they are held to the same food safety, environmental and labelling standards as real meat.
In relation to the amendments, let me go through them so that we are across them. We want to amend the Food Act 1984 in terms of regulating the labelling and use of food terms. We do not want to see the use of ‘milk’ where it is not milk – milk has a definition – and it is not a product of dairy. We want to prevent misleading terms of meat descriptors such as bacon, steak and mince. If you go into any good supermarket or any large supermarket these days, even in the local IGA, you will see ‘bacon-like’ ingredients. They have a market and they deserve to be in that market, but there needs to be a clear differentiation between plant-based foods and cell-cultivated meat. Consumers deserve to see that clarity, and that is what our first amendment does.
On clause 4, on a non-regression and industry support guarantee, we want to ensure that the food safety standards do not go backwards. Surely that must be the objective of any good government – that if you are changing the regulator, changing how it operates, it is held at the same standards. We will be moving an amendment to be able to ensure that the industry does not go backwards – the food production does not go backwards and the quality does not go backwards. It is very important to make sure that nothing is weakened with this bill.
In terms of clause 14, our amendments 4 and 5 look at mandatory industry and regional representation. We are quite concerned that with the new board there is not a specified requirement for a dairy expert, a meat expert, a seafood expert and experts on horticulture and eggs. We want to ensure that there is that representation. We also want to ensure – and this is a very, very big focus particularly of the Nationals but of the Liberals and Nationals – that at least one of those members lives in regional Victoria. There will be advocacy, there will be understanding and there will be decisions made. We often see that decisions are made by people who are in Melbourne and who do not have an understanding of regional Victoria and experience in regional food production, so that is another of the amendments.
In terms of consultation, we want to see far more rigour around the consultation process. Our amendments 6 to 8 to clause 25 would enable real industry consultation. We want to ensure that there are dedicated industry committees and that the majority are industry-led, industry-experienced members and that there is a mandatory referral to correct the sector. It needs to be not just one size fits all and homogenous; we need that specific understanding. We need to ensure that this particular amendment gets up, because it would support a lot of the industry concerned throughout the process.
In terms of our amendment to clause 35, amendment 9, we are looking at mandatory performance transparency. What does it do? It adds reporting. This is about the regulations. We have regulations for an important mechanism to make sure that there are high standards, and if those high standards are not being met, then there needs to be reporting on the types of inspections, the types of enforcement directions, the incidents, health trends that we see and fees, because we then get the full transparency that needs to occur. It would also enable Parliament to assess the effectiveness and to support the understanding around the regulatory burden, and it would also support future scrutiny, potentially even by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee.
In terms of financial reform, our amendments 10 to 13 are to clauses 36 to 38. What this particular amendment does is create a general fund account. They were in separate accounts, PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria; it is amalgamating all those funds to a general fund account. What we specifically want to do is make sure that funds that were in the dairy section are retained in the dairy and food innovation account, that there is a Food Act account, that there is a meat industry account, that there is a seafood safety account and then there is a general account. This ring fences revenue and spending and ensures those fees stay within each sector. This stops this cross-subsidy and ensures that those people who are doing the work, who are producing our food and who are creating employment, economic value and healthy plates for our tables, still have that potential industry research and support in terms of what needs to happen in terms of the regulation.
That is answering some of the other questions from our concerned industry sector. Amendment 14 looks at an independent three-year review. Again, it must assess cost, safety outcomes and export impacts. That is also a very important sector. It forces accountability in terms of this major structural reform, and it provides that oversight. It gives government and the minister at the time important oversight. In terms of our amendments 15 to 18, these look at transition funding for integrity. They redirect the legacy funds, as I have spoken about, into the correct industry accounts, they ensure seafood funding is separated properly and they prevent that distortion over the transition. We do not want to see industry short-changed in this transition.
The other one that we are looking at is clause 82. Our amendment 19 looks to declared food and lab-grown meat. It explicitly includes cell-cultivated protein as a declared food. I thank Emma Kealy for doing this work. We want to ensure that that is a declared food. It clarifies that ‘declared food’ includes novel foods permitted under the Australian and New Zealand food safety standards. It looks at specifically including cell-cultivated protein – meat. I will say ‘meat’ for the last time on that one, but cell-cultivated protein. It introduces safeguards for new food classes. There are some key protections in terms of the cell-cultivated protein. We really want to make sure that the consumer has transparency. We want to ensure that biosecurity and safety oversight are embedded in this legislation. We want to make sure that there is that clarity and understanding. It is forward planning for new developments. It balances innovation, consumer protection and agricultural interests, and I think that is warranted.
Lastly, in terms of ministerial powers, we have a couple of amendments in relation to parliamentary oversight. The minister can only regulate new foods if they are new technologies or non-traditional. This stops the unchecked expansion of regulation.
Finally, the truth. The new clause proposed by our amendment 22 looks at new truth in labelling. It protects terms like ‘cheese’, ‘milk’, ‘meat’ and ‘beef’ and requires clear labelling for plant-based products and cell-cultivated protein. This is important. It states that it must be of equal size to the stated term that the company has decided to use. If it is not milk, you should not be calling it milk. Milk is from a lactating mammal, and we just want that transparency. It is about honesty for consumers. It is about fairness for farmers and no more marketing tricks. It must say what it is and say what it does.
I ask the house to consider these amendments to restore balance to a centralised system, to ensure that there is absolute respect for those that produce our food, that it retains the quality and the industry oversight and that these amendments pass. I will circulate those amendments now.