Page 373 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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business to offer constructive approaches to government and to attempt to address problems that seem to be lost in the system. That is precisely the purpose of this Consumer Affairs (Amendment) Bill.
I confess, Madam Speaker, to having borrowed heavily from my colleague Mr Connolly thus far in my speech; but, since he went on to talk about Consumer Affairs Week, which it was at the time of the introduction of his Bill last year, I will abandon his remarks and go to my own. This Bill deals with food law in this Territory, an area where we still regrettably lack comprehensive consumer protection. It is an area in which this Government should be highly embarrassed because it has been in government for almost a year and has failed to act, even though the Attorney-General has said that this is something of a pet subject for him.
Most food packaging in this country now carries use-by dates, but there are plenty of goods on sale in this Territory which do not display those dates. There is no requirement for shops to sell food bearing use-by dates or to display other forms of information which most people would regard as important, if not essential, consumer advice. I walked into one shop yesterday and was able to pick up a number of items, some of which had no use-by dates and others which had use-by dates which had expired.
Few of the items I purchased carried any indication of when they were manufactured or how old they were. There was little to reassure consumers about the age of the product or its durability. One item in particular was a most egregious example of this problem. I have here a bottle of Tung Chun barbecue sauce which bears on the bottom left-hand corner of the label the words "Use by June 1989". I bought this product in a shop in Civic yesterday. I suspect that if I opened this bottle I would probably accomplish in one fell swoop all the aims of the Abolish Self Government Coalition. I propose to keep it tightly sealed.
I stress that all the goods that I bought yesterday, including this bottle, were quite legally sold and there is no reason at all to suggest that any of them were unsafe or unpalatable, although I would not like to chance the barbecue sauce. The fact remains that the Territory is deficient in this area of consumer protection, an important area, given the fact that we all consume food - some of us more than others.
This Bill effectively seeks to tighten food legislation in the Territory to prevent dumping of products in the ACT which have passed their use-by dates. The issue of use-by dates was first raised by the Attorney in his very first speech in this Territory, as I mentioned. He said at that time - in fact, it was on May Day in 1990:
There are glaring inadequacies in this Territory in consumer protection laws. One only has to go into one's local supermarket and see the out-of-date food openly on display ... to realise that urgent action is needed.
Indeed, Madam Speaker, urgent action is needed. Mr Connolly did make an effort to do something about the problem, and in opposition in March last year he tabled a private member's Bill which sought to tackle the problem of outdated food being dumped in the Territory. That legislation is substantially the same as the legislation that I have presented today. In tabling that Bill, Mr Connolly said
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