Page 3741 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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The advice to the government is that a review of the first year of operation would be of very little benefit. During the first year industry would still be adjusting to the new laws. It would be understandable for minor mistakes and omissions to occur in the early days of the legislation and generally undesirable for a regulator to take a tough, uncompromising approach to any of those minor errors. Accordingly, in the first year of operation the Health Directorate, as the regulator, will be focusing on education and awareness, and stricter enforcement and punitive measures are unlikely to occur until the operation has occurred for a bit of time.
In the second year, the grace period will have concluded and compliance will actively be enforced. By giving a third year of operation before a review is conducted, it allows sufficient time for any contraventions detected to have been prosecuted. This would enable a review to also assess the suitability of the construction of the offence provisions and whether the penalty levels provided are adequate and serving as a suitable deterrent. Increasing the lengths of time in subsections (1) and (2) also necessitates an increase in the period of time after which the section expires. This is just a sensible consideration. It would be ridiculous for the review provision to expire before the review had commenced.
The government does not support the need for the ACT, in isolation, to review and consider broadening nutritional information on point-of-sale displays to include salt, fat, sugar or any other content beyond that agreed to nationally and that other jurisdictions would require at point of sale.
There is also a danger that too much dietary information on a point-of-sale display could undermine the public health intent of the measures by confusing customers. This is especially likely if point-of-sale displays in the ACT were to differ in content to those in other jurisdictions.
Logistics and practicality also need to be considered when imposing a requirement for review. The review provision as proposed by Ms Bresnan expects an analysis as to whether other nutritional information should be included. This sort of analysis would be complex, time consuming and expensive. It also needs to be recognised that the territory’s small population would make any data collected locally of limited value as the sample size could be too easily skewed. As such, it should not be expected of the government to undertake such work in isolation.
This type of analysis is best conducted by, or in collaboration with, Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Nevertheless, the government recognises that if any studies or reviews are conducted nationally or by other jurisdictions addressing the inclusion of other nutritional information, this information should be brought to the Assembly.
For that reason, this amendment will require that any such studies or reviews should be tabled in the Assembly, together with the operational review of the legislation. Given that the report is to be provided three years after the legislation commences, the likelihood of a review or study having been conducted somewhere else during the same time is good.
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