March 12, 2025 • 17 mins
A brainchild of the previous Labour Government, the Healthy School Lunches Programme provides free lunches to about 242,000 students in greatest need.
Since its initial launch in 2019, the programme has often been a target by politicians and commentators over the cost involved in the scheme.
It’s now under the supervision of associate education minister David Seymour, and a cheaper alternative to it launched this year.
It alone has faced a myriad of issues, notably incidents of unappetising, late or absent food deliveries, and a more serious case of one child suffering second-degree burns from a hot lunch.
As a result, hundreds of meals have been left uneaten – and now, one company contracted to deliver the food has gone into liquidation.
So why are free school lunches such a source of controversy – and can the Government get past the negative headlines around them?
Today on The Front Page, we’re joined by Victoria University of Wellington politics professor Dr Lara Greaves to discuss why there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
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You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
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Producer: Ethan Sills
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A brainchild
of the previous Labor government, the Healthy School Lunches program
provides free lunches to about two hundred and forty two
thousand students in greatest need. Since its launch, the program
(00:28):
has often been a target by politicians and commentators of
the cost involved in the scheme. It's now under supervision
of Associate Education Minister David Seymour, and a cheaper alternative
to it launched this year, but it's faced a myriad
of issues, notably incidents of unappetizing, late or absent food
(00:50):
deliveries and a more serious case of one child suffering
second degree burns from a hot lunch. As a result,
hundreds of meals have been left uneaten and now one
company contracted to deliver the food has gone into liquidation.
So why are free school lunches such a source of
controversy and can the government get past the negative headlines
(01:13):
around them? Today on the Front Page, we're joined by
Victoria University of Wellington politics professor doctor Lara Greaves to
discuss why there's no such thing as a free lunch, Lara,
are you surprised by how often we've been talking about
(01:34):
school lunches so far this year? I mean we're only
about a month and a half into the school year,
and it feels like every week we've heard stories about this.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I mean, look, Kaur, I'm not surprised about the school lunches.
Is the fact that there are pictures. So this is
one of those political issues where you can actually just
take a photo of a school lunch and voters can
make snap judgments based on a whether they would eat
the food or b whether they wouldn't. It's kind of
one of those issues where it's quite tempting and it's
quite a simple, black and white kind of issue for
(02:04):
voters when they see, you know, a picture of food
and the same way that people say things like the
flag riferind was quite an easy issue for people get
their heads around, you know, like you haven' like a
flagg you don't. We're not talking about something like, you know,
end of life choice or any kind of big moral
ethical issue. It's being framed in terms of is this
food yucky or yummy? Basically, and so that has meant
(02:24):
that it's captured a lot of political attention because journalists,
you know, here's a photo. We don't need to go
and like do some kind of big investigation. This is
just simple photo proof.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Well, the eighty five million dollar annual contract was won
by the school lunch Collective. Now that's a partnership between
Compass Group and ZAID Liberal Group and Gilmore's Liberal Group
has actually since gone into liquidation. That's going to be
causing the government an enormous headache.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, it's just a saga that's ongoing, really, isn't it.
I think one of the things that it speaks to
is the idea that National campaigned on that last election
as being able to better manage the country and campaigned
against laborhood had you know, all those issues in cabinet
and we're going down on various indicators. So National really
(03:11):
campaign on that. And what we have here now is
we have David Seymore quite firmly and the Associate Education
Minister kind of portfolio in charge of this specific contracting,
in charge of this delivery of these school lunches. And
so what it becomes has it becomes a test so
to speak, of the government, and more specifically, of course,
(03:33):
the buck stops off the Education Minister at the end
of the day with therap A Stanford. But that's what
it comes down to, and we've heard kind of the
latest was that term two. This is all meant to
be sorted out by so the government have kind of
set a bit of a end too, the potential school
lunch saga, although we'll see what happens there. But basically
I think there's a lot of moving parts. There's a
(03:55):
story every couple of days around this, and it's quite.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Really well, it's an absolute shattels, a dismal failure.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's the debarcle.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
A major union is calling for Erica Stanford to be
put in charge. The Associated Minister has really failed our
children and failed to provide good, healthy, wholesome lunches. Chris
Hipkins giving the house are low lights reel if it
hasn't taken feeding children melted plastic, failing to deliver lunches
at all, serving up the same food thirteen days in
(04:34):
a row, or serving pork to Halal's students, what will
it take for him to finally step in and sort
out the mess that his government is made of the
school lunches program?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
How much do you reckon It's damaged the coalition.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's really hard to tell how much it's damaged the coalition.
I've been trying to find political polling on the issue
of school lunches. So there are a couple of separate
issues here. The first one is the extent to which
someone believes that the government should be providing school lunches.
And that's where I was quite surprised initially that a
center right government did support school lunches and did keep
the school lunch program going. So that was quite surprising initially,
(05:12):
especially with someone like act in government too, because they
could have used that as an excuse or you know,
I talked about the ideology behind not having school lunches
and pulling it initially, so there was that initial kind
of almost misalignment with what you would expect the government's
political ideology to be. So then we're kind of going
into starting to go into that kind of territory of Okay, well,
(05:34):
if it's not ideology, what else. Is it quite possible
that public opinion indicates that people want the school lunches,
people like the school lunchers. The only poll that I
could find was commissioned. It was like a Talbot Mills
poll prior to the change of government around whether people
supported an expansion of the school lunches program, and that
showed the majority of people did support that expansion into
(05:57):
kind of more schools back in twenty twenty five. So
it seems like it's a popular program overall. But we
haven't quite as far as I can seen any kind
of high quality polling on this lately. So it must
be one of those kind of middle voter vote winning
type issues. And ultimately, if that's the case, if it's
those kind of swing voters, those medium voters, that kind
(06:18):
of whatever, it is sort of five to ten percent
of people that swing between labor and national if this
is an issue they really care about, it makes a
lot of things for the government to focus on it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, I was quite surprised when the coalition came in
and didn't scrap it immediately. But Seymour was quite proud
of that one hundred and thirty million dollars annual cost
savings he found in his model. But do you think
we'd still even have free school lunches? Like you said
that it must be appealing to someone.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
There has to be something in that, because yes, ideologically
it doesn't seem like Sema and others would be aligned
with this. I mean, of course, all of the other
thing we could do, we could step back for a
moment and not be skeptical about politicians. I mean, all
of the evidence show that you actually want to feed children,
especially ones from lowestof economic backgrounds, so they can best
(07:06):
concentrate in school, so they can make the most of
their learning, make the most of educational opportunities. So actually,
every single piece of evidence points to the fact that
kids need healthy school lunches that are delivered, you know,
in their lunch breaks and help fuel their learning. So
perhaps it is a case of politicians actually going well,
the evidence shows this, you know, it's a if we
think of the broadest social investment co PAPA, which is
(07:26):
long being part of the National Party platform, school lunches
has to be part of it because it helps to
you know, fuel education and make those kids make the
most of educational opportunities. So it could just be politicians
actually acting on evidence, which I mean we're often quite
syptical of well.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Prime Minister Christopher Laxon told News Talks and Bees Mike Hosking.
If parents continue to be dissatisfied with the lunches, they
should pack them themselves.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I just say to you, Yep, there's always going to
be people that are unhappy with school lunches.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And they get that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And if you really are unhappy with it, for God's sake,
go make them my white sandwich an apple in a bag,
just like you and I head.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Is there now becoming this attitude in New Zealand that
parents should perhaps pack their own kids lunches, because that's
the Prime Minister saying that.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's hard because, like I said before, there's a group
of people who ideologically really do not believe in the
state providing lunches to parents. It's quite clear that that's
a quite firm ideological position. So we know that that
idea exists in the population. We don't know how many
people agree howleheartedly with that, and we don't know like
who they vote for, although we could probably make an
(08:30):
educated gift that they probably are more on the right
wing side of the political spectrum, So we kind of
know that those people exist. One of the things, though, overall,
is when something becomes a meme in politic we have
this overall, we've seen this overall idea come up in
terms of the preferred Prime minister, polling and various memes,
various commentary that lux In is to some degree out
(08:51):
of touch. So one of the things that the government
and lucks them have to be really careful about here
is that that then doesn't go against what those medium voters,
what there's middle voters view as New Zealand values viewers,
giving people a fair goal, and that any kind of
rhetoric doesn't just become a meme. Like I saw a
lot of memes around about that Apple and there was
a Vigiemite Marmite and there was a lot of Marmite jokes,
(09:14):
you know that kind of thing. So you just have
to make sure that these things don't carry on and
contribute to that idea that the government is disconnected from
everyday New Zealanders and the economic issue.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, and to your point before on The Herald's Politics podcast,
the panel there suggested that the fact that lux And
has taken such a firm line on this suggests that
might be what focus groups are telling them.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
It was quite stark, actually, the way that the government's
messaging on this changed almost overnight. In fact, I think
it was overnight we had the mar Mate and Apple's line,
and then every minister was using it, and that was
the line because I think they might have done some
focus grouping. Line denies that they have, but basically saying
it is the parent's responsibility to provide lunches, and we
have a wide base of people that think this, so
(09:58):
we're going to lean into that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Would you agree with that because it does feel, like
you mentioned before, it's targeting a specific demographic of voters.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, when we look at that group of voters, has
been work in the New Zealand Editude of Value study
by Nicole Safale and others that looks at who those
voters are in that seed to block the election. Studies
looked at them as well, and they are that kind
of tended to be more likely to be a woman,
tended to be more likely to be middle aged, and
that kind of group of people we can already kind
of profile or stereotype is caring about kids lunches. So
(10:29):
that is quite possible that there are focus groups. There
are people out there saying that this would be that
school lunches are aligned in some way with key values,
are aligned some way with the interests of center voters,
And again it's a shame that we don't have more
political polls and we don't have more kind of research
and public opinion work on this, because every single data
point that we have does indicate that this might be
(10:52):
something that is focus group driven as public opinion driven,
and ultimately it does start to over time contribute to
people's idea about the government, about their competency, about their decisiveness,
and about their values.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Have school lunches turned into an ideological issue because there's
definitely a large portion of the population who feels that
the bare minimum of having a child is being able
to feed them every day. Right. But on the other side,
we know that poverty is a massive issue in this country,
and these lunches perhaps are freeing up those families struggling
to make ends meet to put their money elsewhere. So
is this just going to be an issue that causes
(11:39):
controversy no matter who's running the country.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Ultimately, we've seen, especially since the Fourth Labor Government, over
this last sort of what is it thirty forty years,
we've seen a lot of discussion over the state's role
in welfare and the state's role providing for children versus
the responsibility of individual parents of parents of fauna or
(12:02):
families of communities and so on and so forth. So
this is a repeated discussion that we had in New
Zealand politics going back to at least the nineteen nineties,
and actually you can kind of see it even earlier
than that, and things like the family benefit in the
post World War two period. So it's one of those
debates that we've long had in New Zealand politics and
that we can expect every few years for this debate
to evolve and change in a different way about the
(12:24):
role of parents and the role of things like welfare
and the role of the state. It had seemed when
National and when this government came in that school lunches
were there to stay. I guess now it does remain
to be seen as to whether the government will just
in them, just hear the band aid off and take
any public opinion hit whether they will continue this online.
But ultimately school lunches are just a new version of
(12:45):
that kind of role of the state and the role
of welfare type political debates that we've been having for decades.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
David Seymour was on this podcast last year and talked
about how he agrees with providing school lunches in theory
because it's good for the economy.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Would it be smart for New Zealand as a country
to do what they do, and say the UK or
partner of America where actually the kids lunch making is
done by a company that delivers it to the school,
and then parents who have the ability to pay, they pay.
Parents who don't they get it subsidized by the government.
Might be better than millions of parents every morning getting
(13:23):
up and spending a substantial amount of time making the
lunch when they could be out being an accountant or
working in a pharmacy, or doing whatever it is that
those parents do.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
This is a hard one. So when we go back
to something like what would it be the purpose or
the point of having school lunches? One of the things,
of course, I'm an academic, so I'm going to go
back to what is the academic evidence here, And one
of the things that colleagues in nutrition and education have
been saying over and over again is that, yes, probably
(13:58):
giving school lunches will be good for the economy. There's
definitely an argument there because kids need to be fed
to be able to, you know, like actually make the
most of educational opportunities and learn things, and then they
go on to be better workers, better educated, you know,
go into professions and so on and so forth. So
there's definitely that argument there. The more time in the
Morning's argument, I'm not I mean, it's probably one of
(14:20):
those interesting kind of examples. Again, can't speak to that,
but overall, the body of evidence shows that long term,
at least there's an argument that they would be better
for the economy.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, with the backlash we're seeing over the kids not
eating the food and then being ungrateful, this, that and
the other, it looking awful. I mean, I've seen some
of those pictures. I would eat some of them, but
I wouldn't eat others. Is there a real chance the
coalition could just end the school lunch program altogether? I mean,
is it really going to be that much of a
big election issue?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Oh see, one of the things, the school lunch program
now has continued on and going on and on and on.
And this is the thing. Remember, we have to go
back to the last leave of government. Here we build
and how many houses they were going to build, went
on and on and on, and to some degree, obviously
crises interrupted that discourse. But we have to look at
(15:09):
governments and like they will have these issues that go
on and on and on, and for National, for the government,
it stands. I think they will want to try to
end at least the discourse, and there's only a certain
ways that they can do that. I have a distracting
based on another issue. Either fixing the school lunch program
is one way to do it, or getting rid of it.
(15:30):
I mean, they're going to have to make some kind
of decision because otherwise this will go on and on.
People will get kind of bored of it. It will
become a joke, it will become a meme, and it
will become something that people can point to as the
failure of the government. And especially on your first term,
you want to limit the failures that people can point to.
You want to limit in the twenty twenty sixth election
the extent to which Hipkins or Labor leader at the
(15:53):
time can point at National and say, well, you failed
on the school lunches. You couldn't even manage that program.
So it's going to be a continuing issue, and I
think we will see some kind of ending of it,
whether it is trying to distract everyone or ending the
school lunch program.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
What do you reckon is the most likely because they're
not going to be spending any more money to make
it any better.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh, it's a struggle, there isn't it. I wouldn't be
surprised if they ended it. It aligns with the broader ideology.
And we're still quite a way away up from the election.
So there's certain certain kind of hits that you need
to take in government with certain issues that you need
to just sweep under the rug or lose or not
succeed on, and this might be one of them for
National But yeah, it remains to be seen, and it's
(16:36):
also remains to be seen the extent to which it
would blowback on Seymour. We saw an interview on Q
and A not long ago of Erica Stanford in the
role as Education Minister, and she kind of did say, well,
it's Seymour's area at Seymour's area. Yeah. The extent to
which it reflects back on Seymour versus other parts of
the coalition again remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Thanks for joining us, Lara Da.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co, dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(17:26):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A brainchild
of the previous Labor government, the Healthy School Lunches program
provides free lunches to about two hundred and forty two
thousand students in greatest need. Since its launch, the program
(00:28):
has often been a target by politicians and commentators of
the cost involved in the scheme. It's now under supervision
of Associate Education Minister David Seymour, and a cheaper alternative
to it launched this year, but it's faced a myriad
of issues, notably incidents of unappetizing, late or absent food
(00:50):
deliveries and a more serious case of one child suffering
second degree burns from a hot lunch. As a result,
hundreds of meals have been left uneaten and now one
company contracted to deliver the food has gone into liquidation.
So why are free school lunches such a source of
controversy and can the government get past the negative headlines
(01:13):
around them? Today on the Front Page, we're joined by
Victoria University of Wellington politics professor doctor Lara Greaves to
discuss why there's no such thing as a free lunch, Lara,
are you surprised by how often we've been talking about
(01:34):
school lunches so far this year? I mean we're only
about a month and a half into the school year,
and it feels like every week we've heard stories about this.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I mean, look, Kaur, I'm not surprised about the school lunches.
Is the fact that there are pictures. So this is
one of those political issues where you can actually just
take a photo of a school lunch and voters can
make snap judgments based on a whether they would eat
the food or b whether they wouldn't. It's kind of
one of those issues where it's quite tempting and it's
quite a simple, black and white kind of issue for
(02:04):
voters when they see, you know, a picture of food
and the same way that people say things like the
flag riferind was quite an easy issue for people get
their heads around, you know, like you haven' like a
flagg you don't. We're not talking about something like, you know,
end of life choice or any kind of big moral
ethical issue. It's being framed in terms of is this
food yucky or yummy? Basically, and so that has meant
(02:24):
that it's captured a lot of political attention because journalists,
you know, here's a photo. We don't need to go
and like do some kind of big investigation. This is
just simple photo proof.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Well, the eighty five million dollar annual contract was won
by the school lunch Collective. Now that's a partnership between
Compass Group and ZAID Liberal Group and Gilmore's Liberal Group
has actually since gone into liquidation. That's going to be
causing the government an enormous headache.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, it's just a saga that's ongoing, really, isn't it.
I think one of the things that it speaks to
is the idea that National campaigned on that last election
as being able to better manage the country and campaigned
against laborhood had you know, all those issues in cabinet
and we're going down on various indicators. So National really
(03:11):
campaign on that. And what we have here now is
we have David Seymore quite firmly and the Associate Education
Minister kind of portfolio in charge of this specific contracting,
in charge of this delivery of these school lunches. And
so what it becomes has it becomes a test so
to speak, of the government, and more specifically, of course,
(03:33):
the buck stops off the Education Minister at the end
of the day with therap A Stanford. But that's what
it comes down to, and we've heard kind of the
latest was that term two. This is all meant to
be sorted out by so the government have kind of
set a bit of a end too, the potential school
lunch saga, although we'll see what happens there. But basically
I think there's a lot of moving parts. There's a
(03:55):
story every couple of days around this, and it's quite.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Really well, it's an absolute shattels, a dismal failure.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's the debarcle.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
A major union is calling for Erica Stanford to be
put in charge. The Associated Minister has really failed our
children and failed to provide good, healthy, wholesome lunches. Chris
Hipkins giving the house are low lights reel if it
hasn't taken feeding children melted plastic, failing to deliver lunches
at all, serving up the same food thirteen days in
(04:34):
a row, or serving pork to Halal's students, what will
it take for him to finally step in and sort
out the mess that his government is made of the
school lunches program?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
How much do you reckon It's damaged the coalition.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's really hard to tell how much it's damaged the coalition.
I've been trying to find political polling on the issue
of school lunches. So there are a couple of separate
issues here. The first one is the extent to which
someone believes that the government should be providing school lunches.
And that's where I was quite surprised initially that a
center right government did support school lunches and did keep
the school lunch program going. So that was quite surprising initially,
(05:12):
especially with someone like act in government too, because they
could have used that as an excuse or you know,
I talked about the ideology behind not having school lunches
and pulling it initially, so there was that initial kind
of almost misalignment with what you would expect the government's
political ideology to be. So then we're kind of going
into starting to go into that kind of territory of Okay, well,
(05:34):
if it's not ideology, what else. Is it quite possible
that public opinion indicates that people want the school lunches,
people like the school lunchers. The only poll that I
could find was commissioned. It was like a Talbot Mills
poll prior to the change of government around whether people
supported an expansion of the school lunches program, and that
showed the majority of people did support that expansion into
(05:57):
kind of more schools back in twenty twenty five. So
it seems like it's a popular program overall. But we
haven't quite as far as I can seen any kind
of high quality polling on this lately. So it must
be one of those kind of middle voter vote winning
type issues. And ultimately, if that's the case, if it's
those kind of swing voters, those medium voters, that kind
(06:18):
of whatever, it is sort of five to ten percent
of people that swing between labor and national if this
is an issue they really care about, it makes a
lot of things for the government to focus on it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, I was quite surprised when the coalition came in
and didn't scrap it immediately. But Seymour was quite proud
of that one hundred and thirty million dollars annual cost
savings he found in his model. But do you think
we'd still even have free school lunches? Like you said
that it must be appealing to someone.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
There has to be something in that, because yes, ideologically
it doesn't seem like Sema and others would be aligned
with this. I mean, of course, all of the other
thing we could do, we could step back for a
moment and not be skeptical about politicians. I mean, all
of the evidence show that you actually want to feed children,
especially ones from lowestof economic backgrounds, so they can best
(07:06):
concentrate in school, so they can make the most of
their learning, make the most of educational opportunities. So actually,
every single piece of evidence points to the fact that
kids need healthy school lunches that are delivered, you know,
in their lunch breaks and help fuel their learning. So
perhaps it is a case of politicians actually going well,
the evidence shows this, you know, it's a if we
think of the broadest social investment co PAPA, which is
(07:26):
long being part of the National Party platform, school lunches
has to be part of it because it helps to
you know, fuel education and make those kids make the
most of educational opportunities. So it could just be politicians
actually acting on evidence, which I mean we're often quite
syptical of well.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Prime Minister Christopher Laxon told News Talks and Bees Mike Hosking.
If parents continue to be dissatisfied with the lunches, they
should pack them themselves.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I just say to you, Yep, there's always going to
be people that are unhappy with school lunches.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And they get that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And if you really are unhappy with it, for God's sake,
go make them my white sandwich an apple in a bag,
just like you and I head.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Is there now becoming this attitude in New Zealand that
parents should perhaps pack their own kids lunches, because that's
the Prime Minister saying that.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's hard because, like I said before, there's a group
of people who ideologically really do not believe in the
state providing lunches to parents. It's quite clear that that's
a quite firm ideological position. So we know that that
idea exists in the population. We don't know how many
people agree howleheartedly with that, and we don't know like
who they vote for, although we could probably make an
(08:30):
educated gift that they probably are more on the right
wing side of the political spectrum, So we kind of
know that those people exist. One of the things, though, overall,
is when something becomes a meme in politic we have
this overall, we've seen this overall idea come up in
terms of the preferred Prime minister, polling and various memes,
various commentary that lux In is to some degree out
(08:51):
of touch. So one of the things that the government
and lucks them have to be really careful about here
is that that then doesn't go against what those medium voters,
what there's middle voters view as New Zealand values viewers,
giving people a fair goal, and that any kind of
rhetoric doesn't just become a meme. Like I saw a
lot of memes around about that Apple and there was
a Vigiemite Marmite and there was a lot of Marmite jokes,
(09:14):
you know that kind of thing. So you just have
to make sure that these things don't carry on and
contribute to that idea that the government is disconnected from
everyday New Zealanders and the economic issue.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, and to your point before on The Herald's Politics podcast,
the panel there suggested that the fact that lux And
has taken such a firm line on this suggests that
might be what focus groups are telling them.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
It was quite stark, actually, the way that the government's
messaging on this changed almost overnight. In fact, I think
it was overnight we had the mar Mate and Apple's line,
and then every minister was using it, and that was
the line because I think they might have done some
focus grouping. Line denies that they have, but basically saying
it is the parent's responsibility to provide lunches, and we
have a wide base of people that think this, so
(09:58):
we're going to lean into that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Would you agree with that because it does feel, like
you mentioned before, it's targeting a specific demographic of voters.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, when we look at that group of voters, has
been work in the New Zealand Editude of Value study
by Nicole Safale and others that looks at who those
voters are in that seed to block the election. Studies
looked at them as well, and they are that kind
of tended to be more likely to be a woman,
tended to be more likely to be middle aged, and
that kind of group of people we can already kind
of profile or stereotype is caring about kids lunches. So
(10:29):
that is quite possible that there are focus groups. There
are people out there saying that this would be that
school lunches are aligned in some way with key values,
are aligned some way with the interests of center voters,
And again it's a shame that we don't have more
political polls and we don't have more kind of research
and public opinion work on this, because every single data
point that we have does indicate that this might be
(10:52):
something that is focus group driven as public opinion driven,
and ultimately it does start to over time contribute to
people's idea about the government, about their competency, about their decisiveness,
and about their values.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Have school lunches turned into an ideological issue because there's
definitely a large portion of the population who feels that
the bare minimum of having a child is being able
to feed them every day. Right. But on the other side,
we know that poverty is a massive issue in this country,
and these lunches perhaps are freeing up those families struggling
to make ends meet to put their money elsewhere. So
is this just going to be an issue that causes
(11:39):
controversy no matter who's running the country.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Ultimately, we've seen, especially since the Fourth Labor Government, over
this last sort of what is it thirty forty years,
we've seen a lot of discussion over the state's role
in welfare and the state's role providing for children versus
the responsibility of individual parents of parents of fauna or
(12:02):
families of communities and so on and so forth. So
this is a repeated discussion that we had in New
Zealand politics going back to at least the nineteen nineties,
and actually you can kind of see it even earlier
than that, and things like the family benefit in the
post World War two period. So it's one of those
debates that we've long had in New Zealand politics and
that we can expect every few years for this debate
to evolve and change in a different way about the
(12:24):
role of parents and the role of things like welfare
and the role of the state. It had seemed when
National and when this government came in that school lunches
were there to stay. I guess now it does remain
to be seen as to whether the government will just
in them, just hear the band aid off and take
any public opinion hit whether they will continue this online.
But ultimately school lunches are just a new version of
(12:45):
that kind of role of the state and the role
of welfare type political debates that we've been having for decades.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
David Seymour was on this podcast last year and talked
about how he agrees with providing school lunches in theory
because it's good for the economy.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Would it be smart for New Zealand as a country
to do what they do, and say the UK or
partner of America where actually the kids lunch making is
done by a company that delivers it to the school,
and then parents who have the ability to pay, they pay.
Parents who don't they get it subsidized by the government.
Might be better than millions of parents every morning getting
(13:23):
up and spending a substantial amount of time making the
lunch when they could be out being an accountant or
working in a pharmacy, or doing whatever it is that
those parents do.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
This is a hard one. So when we go back
to something like what would it be the purpose or
the point of having school lunches? One of the things,
of course, I'm an academic, so I'm going to go
back to what is the academic evidence here, And one
of the things that colleagues in nutrition and education have
been saying over and over again is that, yes, probably
(13:58):
giving school lunches will be good for the economy. There's
definitely an argument there because kids need to be fed
to be able to, you know, like actually make the
most of educational opportunities and learn things, and then they
go on to be better workers, better educated, you know,
go into professions and so on and so forth. So
there's definitely that argument there. The more time in the
Morning's argument, I'm not I mean, it's probably one of
(14:20):
those interesting kind of examples. Again, can't speak to that,
but overall, the body of evidence shows that long term,
at least there's an argument that they would be better
for the economy.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, with the backlash we're seeing over the kids not
eating the food and then being ungrateful, this, that and
the other, it looking awful. I mean, I've seen some
of those pictures. I would eat some of them, but
I wouldn't eat others. Is there a real chance the
coalition could just end the school lunch program altogether? I mean,
is it really going to be that much of a
big election issue?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Oh see, one of the things, the school lunch program
now has continued on and going on and on and on.
And this is the thing. Remember, we have to go
back to the last leave of government. Here we build
and how many houses they were going to build, went
on and on and on, and to some degree, obviously
crises interrupted that discourse. But we have to look at
(15:09):
governments and like they will have these issues that go
on and on and on, and for National, for the government,
it stands. I think they will want to try to
end at least the discourse, and there's only a certain
ways that they can do that. I have a distracting
based on another issue. Either fixing the school lunch program
is one way to do it, or getting rid of it.
(15:30):
I mean, they're going to have to make some kind
of decision because otherwise this will go on and on.
People will get kind of bored of it. It will
become a joke, it will become a meme, and it
will become something that people can point to as the
failure of the government. And especially on your first term,
you want to limit the failures that people can point to.
You want to limit in the twenty twenty sixth election
the extent to which Hipkins or Labor leader at the
(15:53):
time can point at National and say, well, you failed
on the school lunches. You couldn't even manage that program.
So it's going to be a continuing issue, and I
think we will see some kind of ending of it,
whether it is trying to distract everyone or ending the
school lunch program.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
What do you reckon is the most likely because they're
not going to be spending any more money to make
it any better.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh, it's a struggle, there isn't it. I wouldn't be
surprised if they ended it. It aligns with the broader ideology.
And we're still quite a way away up from the election.
So there's certain certain kind of hits that you need
to take in government with certain issues that you need
to just sweep under the rug or lose or not
succeed on, and this might be one of them for
National But yeah, it remains to be seen, and it's
(16:36):
also remains to be seen the extent to which it
would blowback on Seymour. We saw an interview on Q
and A not long ago of Erica Stanford in the
role as Education Minister, and she kind of did say, well,
it's Seymour's area at Seymour's area. Yeah. The extent to
which it reflects back on Seymour versus other parts of
the coalition again remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Thanks for joining us, Lara Da.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co, dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(17:26):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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