David Seymour says he’s been upfront about issues with the revamped school lunch programme and is solving them, and has shrugged off a call by a union for the Education Minister to take over overseeing the programme.
He has also responded to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s remarks yesterday that parents who were unhappy with provided school lunches should “make a Marmite sandwich and put an apple in the bag”.
His comment follows further complaints about the revamped scheme from schools, including an incident involving meals with plastic melted into the contents.
“There was an incident the other day where they burnt some meals, that’s not good enough,” Associate Education Minister Seymour told Breakfast today.
“We acknowledge that, we found out what happened within 24 hours, and we’ve gone back and we’re not going to do it again.”
He said there was always going to be issues when delivering so many meals across the country everyday, but said the Government had been “upfront, honest and acknowledged those and we are solving them”.
Seymour said the ultimate goal was to “make sure the healthy school lunch programme works well” and was cost effective.
Asked what he thought about the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday, Seymour said: “Chris is absolutely correct, actually”.
“Parents have a responsibility to feed their children. Parents have the right and the ability to send their children to school with lunch. We haven’t taken that away, we haven’t banned that.”
In response to complaints about quality and late deliveries, Seymour said:
“Actually the meal quality has been very good, but there have been some problems in recent days,” he said.
Seymour said there had been 99% on time delivery for Monday, and did not have the figures for Tuesday.
“We have had problems, we’ve been upfront about them, we’ve solved them, and we’ll continue to do that. The net result will be meals the children do actually like.”
Asked if he was frustrated by the teething problems, Seymour said there was “no point being frustrated”.
“This particular programme has a lot more political attention on it right now. My commitment is that we are going to do it really well, we’re going to overcome problems when we find them and be first class in what we do.”
Seymour said he was the person put in charge of this, and would tell Education Minister Erica Stanford the plan moving forward was “continuous improvement”.
The pair were due to meet yesterday to discuss the issues but it was put off after ACT’s caucus meeting ran late. They are due to meet today.
‘A disaster’ – Chris Hipkins
Chris Hipkins says the Government should “go back to a programme that was working”. (Source: Breakfast)
Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Breakfast the rollout of school lunch programme had been “an unmitigated disaster”.
“In the space of about 48 hours we’ve gone from the Prime Minister saying he thinks this is David Seymour’s number one priority, to now saying ‘it’s actually parents’ responsibility to feed kids’.”
He said during the election campaign the Government said the school lunches programme was going well, and they were going to keep it, but had since “completely wrecked it”.
“The reality is for some of these kids, their free school lunch is the only hot meal they’ll get in a day. And that’s a tragedy – but it is also a reality.
“For those kids, taking away their free school lunch is going to do enormous harm and enormous damage to them.”
Asked whether he would do things differently, Hipkins pointed to Labour’s previous lunch programme, which he said was about connecting local suppliers with local schools to mitigate issues.
“The result of that is we got food waste down to less than 6%. Given that schools are now reporting that on some days barely any lunches are getting eaten… I think it shows that the programme we had in place was very successful.”
Seymour said the previous government’s four-year budget did not leave any money to deliver the school lunch programme in 2025.
“We had to either borrow another $340 million, tax another $340 million, or cut some other thing – perhaps in education. We thought those weren’t good options.
“What we did was ask ourselves ‘how can we deliver healthy school lunches for a lower price?’ And we figured out how to do it for $170 million,” he said.
Education union responds
NZEI Te Riu Roa President Ripeka Lessels said children deserve “a lot more than what David Seymour is offering”. (Source: Breakfast)
NZEI Te Riu Roa President Ripeka Lessels said children deserve “good, healthy, wholesome lunches now” and does not think Seymour can deliver them.
“We’ve had these continual issues with the lunches and obviously David Seymour isn’t listening. It’s time for Minister Stanford to step in.
“We’re calling for her to take control and take back the lunches.”
Lessels said Seymour “has not been able to fix the issues, and we continually see issues”.
“The issues have been consistent, and continual since the inception of these lunches.”
“It is the Minister of Education’s job to fix it, and she is the Minister of Education so she should be able to step in and fix the issue.”
Seymour said he had discussed the issues with other ministers and they were happy with his efforts.
He said Lessels was entitled to her view “but at the end of the day, that’s the union view and they’re playing politics”.
