Both Labour’s Kieran McAnulty and National’s Chris Bishop agree it is a “good thing” that more children will be fed following changes to the Healthy School Lunches Programme.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said the Government will feed the same number of school students and extend the Healthy School Lunches Programme to 10,000 preschoolers.
Seymour said his scheme would spend $107 million less than the Labour Government by ordering items in bulk.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, National’s Chris Bishop said the Government’s changes to the school lunch programme created savings by stripping it “back to basics”.
“This is about saving money and making things more efficient and effective.”
He said using the Government’s bulk purchasing power will make ingredients cheaper and more efficient.
“The reality is, the funding was going to be stopped in two years, we’ve now filled that gap. We’ve essentially extended it to 10,000 early childcare kids.
“It’s a positive thing that has been widely welcomed. There will always be a few critics, but I think most people think it’s a good thing.”
When asked if the Labour government had overspent on previous lunches, Labour’s Kieran McAnulty said he didn’t think so, but agreed more kids being fed is a “good thing”.
“I would have liked to see the savings made and reinvested to get even more kids fed as it was in the Labour government’s manifesto,” he said.
McAnulty said feedback from principals within schools and wider communities showed the scheme was working. He said for many children, this was their only hot meal of the day.
“Dropping it down to three dollars, I’m worried that is not going to provide the sort of lunch that some kids would want to eat.”
Health Coalition Aotearoa’s Boyd Swinburn said students can’t learn on an empty stomach.
‘You cannot learn on an empty stomach’
Co-chairperson of advocacy group Health Coalition Aotearoa professor Boyd Swinburn told Breakfast the programme was “front of mind” for many schools.
“This is huge reduction in the amount of funding for these lunches.”
He said the change to buying in bulk for students in intermediate and secondary school would likely result in more packaged foods being delivered to kids with a reduced nutritional value.
“Pallets of packaged foods are not going to remotely match the high quality, nutritionally balanced and tasty meals of Ka Ora, Ka Ako,” he said.
Swinburn said the said David Seymour’s comments yesterday describing quinoa and couscous as “woke foods” was “very dismissive”.
“The people who are delivering these lunches, whether it’s the in-school programme or external suppliers, they really care about giving kids good food that they like, that is tasty and meets nutritional standards.
“They’ve put a lot of hard work into that, so I think he’s being very dismissive of all the hard work that’s gone into it.”
