Page 1057 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 1991
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Unfortunately, progress on that matter has not been very quick and we have seen considerable problems in a whole series of places in getting new legislation in place. The ACT, I have to say, also has been very slow in this matter and I lay the blame very firmly at the door of the Commonwealth. The legislation was provided in 1980 as a model Act and the ACT got self-government in May 1989. In those nine years nothing, apparently, was done to provide the ACT with this food legislation. We have had less than two years in the meantime to deal with the problem, and I am pleased to say that it will not be much longer that we will have to wait for that. However, to provide legislation in this area which does not take account of what has been happening in other jurisdictions would be quite wrong, quite false.
New South Wales does not conform with the procedures followed elsewhere in this country. New South Wales is, in that respect, behind other jurisdictions which have adopted the national food standards code. A major function of our own food Act will be to do just that - to adopt the national Food Standards Code and to incorporate that, by reference, into ACT legislation. That is what other jurisdictions in this country have done, except for New South Wales.
The Food Standards Code requires food to be labelled as prescribed. The labelling requirements include placing a best use-by date - that is a very different thing, I should point out, from the durable life date, and I will come back to that in a moment - or the date of packaging on the label of any food. So there are two sorts of information that can be provided - when the food was actually packaged or what is the best date by which the food should be used.
It is interesting to note that the Bill put forward by Mr Connolly requires that both these pieces of information should be provided. It is also interesting to note that, even so far as New South Wales is concerned, Mr Connolly is behind the times, because I am instructed that New South Wales has just amended, or is about to amend, its legislation to replace the "and" with an "or". So, in that regard, the model has been rather clumsily applied to the ACT.
The difference between a durable life and a use-by date is very important. They are not the same sort of thing. The best use-by date obviously is a date by which it is recommended that the food should be consumed. Durable life does have a different meaning and it is appropriate to not confuse those two terms. I understand that at the Premiers Conference in Brisbane last year discussion occurred concerning the Food Standards Code and the Chief Minister, on behalf of the ACT, agreed that there would be no variation to the Food Standards Code to enable food to be produced and sold nationally without local variations to labelling requirements.
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