An Auckland primary school received frozen pizza rolls for lunch today — just days after it was revealed that the School Lunch Collective had turned to Australia to ensure it had enough meals.
Massey Primary School principal Bruce Barnes said the pizza rolls were unopened and still frozen when they were delivered.
“They’re quite disgusting really, there’s no nutritional value in them. It’s shocking.”
Many schools covered by the collective received individually-packaged meals from Australia on Wednesday — mostly beef lasagne, but three-cheese macaroni for others.
Barnes said the lasagne was “of very poor quality”.
“The kids just don’t like them.”
A spokesperson for School Lunch Collective told RNZ that the meals had been sourced from Australia due to a “manufacturing shortfall”.
It comes in the same week that Libelle — who made 125,000 meals a day for the collective — went into liquidation.
Contract holder Compass Group said it would ensure Libelle’s staff were paid that its kitchens kept running.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he would have preferred the lunches to be made by New Zealand providers.
“Maybe this is a short-term fix,” he said, adding that Seymour was “fully accountable” for the programme’s delivery.
“He’s working hard at it, so let him close it out.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the idea that the programme had “given up” on Kiwi suppliers altogether and flown the lunches in from Australia was “frankly ridiculous”.
“Thousands of jobs around the country have been affected by their decision to go for a cut price option.
“This has been an abject failure, it’s time for the Government to admit this is an absolute cock-up, 100% of their own making.”
The School Lunch Collective refused to be interviewed by 1News or say how many lunches were being flown in from Australia.
