Let them eat...marmite sandwiches??

Today the Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand went on national radio show and told the nation that parents of hungry school children should send their child to school with a marmite sandwich and an apple in a paper bag.

This is incredibly out-of-touch commentary from the PM here. In short:

• Access to white-bread sandwiches isn't the issue - growing teenagers need more than white bread to support their growth and development.

• Good quality protein is expensive and costs energy/power to cook.

• Kids don't need more cheap, shoddy lunches. They need decent meals.

It's shameful that we, as a society, don't ensure this.

Also, most parents ARE in paid employment - but our government refuses to mandate a living wage, will not address the high cost of housing driving poverty, and if you get sick you can't get in to see a GP, let alone a much-needed specialist.

This government’s policies are driving hard-working families into poverty (see, for example, this NZ Herald piece, titled Government freezes incomes of 3000 mostly single-parent families, saving $970,000). Now they are also failing to provide children with adequate school lunches.

screenshot from Waatea News page

Aotearoa New Zealand had an excellent school lunch programme in Ka Ora, Ka Ako. The scheme supported local employment, provided tasty, appetizing and nutritious meals, and was generally very well received across the country. There was no rational reason to destroy it.

Education Minister Erica Stanford has allowed Associate Minister of Education David Seymour to trash a well-functioning school lunch programme and implement this Compass disaster of a scheme. It has barely saved any money.

As

Mountain Tūī

notes:

the per school lunch cost is now a minimum of just under $4 - excluding the large number of new, added costs the government is ignoring.¹

Naturally, Seymour dances around this by claiming it will save “up to 170 million” once it is “fully rolled out”. Once you factor in teacher time, additional subcontracting costs, and invoices from school to the Ministry, this slop is not saving any money at all.

Carmel Sepuloni said on RNZ last week,

"He's the one that turned this programme upside down. It was working really well prior to David Seymour's intervention, but I will put on the record too that the primary Minister of Education is Erica Stanford, she needs to stand up, take over and fix this mess because clearly David Seymour is not capable of doing so."

Being from a working family in low-waged jobs living in over-priced housing shouldn’t mean that we justify consigning school students to hunger, force them to eat inedible meals, or provide unappetizing, tasteless mush.

New Zealand is a wealthy country; we have the money to collectively feed every school child a decent midday meal. This government has chosen to take food from hungry children’s mouths and give it to landlords, oil barons, tobacco companies, and tax cuts for the already wealthy. I will never not be appalled by this.

---

For more on school lunches (from me):

Seymour's school lunches are still terrible, three weeks in

School lunches are a form of collective care

Slop for the poors

For more on school lunches (from other Substack writers):

• Jam Sandwiches by The End is Naenae

• What does David Seymour have against kids? by Mountain Tui

• Seymour’s late, missing, discarded, allergenic, nutritionless, dangerous, and skimpy school lunch programme is unravelling by The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

• Muck and Money by Bryan Bruce Investigates