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Speaker 1: One of the government's school lunch providers has gone into liquidation.

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Speaker 1: LaBelle Group made one hundred and twenty five thousand of

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Speaker 1: their meals each day. Liquidatas are now working with Compass Group,

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Speaker 1: that's the main group involved, to make sure that the

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Speaker 1: staff still get paid, the kitchens are open and the

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Speaker 1: kids get fed. The Athleader David Seymour is in charge.

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Speaker 1: High Minister.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me on.

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Speaker 1: Does this mean that kids are going to go without lunch.

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Speaker 2: No, We've been dealing with some difficult circumstances, but our

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Speaker 2: number one priority has been what they call business continuity,

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Speaker 2: making sure that the deliveries continue to happen on time

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Speaker 2: and form.

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Speaker 1: And is it going to cost us anything extra?

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Speaker 2: Know that the contracts is between the Ministry of Education

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Speaker 2: and Compass. That's contract remains. Any issues that may be

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Speaker 2: reported in the media are between Compass and other businesses.

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Speaker 2: And really I don't want to sound like I'm avoiding

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Speaker 2: the issue, but it is actually something that needs to

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Speaker 2: be left to them.

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Speaker 1: Is this a sign that's not actually economic economically viable

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Speaker 1: to do the lunches as cheaply as you want.

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Speaker 2: No, I'm very confident that it will continue and people

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Speaker 2: will see that it can be a success. It has

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Speaker 2: been a success. In many cases, people forget the good

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Speaker 2: news and that the good meals and the people that

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Speaker 2: are very appreciative of this program, and that's all been

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Speaker 2: done at a price. There's been some issues around supply.

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Speaker 2: I don't really want to go into it because there's

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Speaker 2: still commercial stuff going on and I don't want to

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Speaker 2: take sides in that. But nonetheless, you know, we're solving

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Speaker 2: problems and it's going to get even better.

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Speaker 1: Is it fair to say that this was the rotten apple,

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Speaker 1: that these guys were actually responsible for the bulk of

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Speaker 1: all the stuff that's been going wrong.

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Speaker 2: Look, I don't want to say that, because, like I say,

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Speaker 2: there's contracts between different businesses they have to work out

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Speaker 2: amongst themselves. Me jumping in and publicly taking sides is

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Speaker 2: the last thing that's needed right now.

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Speaker 1: Are you confident how the Ministry has handled this with

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Speaker 1: their due diligence. I mean there were issues raised with

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Speaker 1: Libel for going back to last year, some pretty serious

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Speaker 1: ones about delivery, about the quality, I mean all the

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Speaker 1: stuff we've been talking about this year. Did they do

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Speaker 1: enough checks and balances? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Look, I think that they did. I think, you know,

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Speaker 2: in the fullness of time, all the details will come

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Speaker 2: out and people will judge that I and frankly the

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Speaker 2: Ministry of Education have actually acted really well through this process.

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Speaker 2: What I would say is that, yes, there are criticisms

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Speaker 2: of label, there are criticisms of compass, but actually, if

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Speaker 2: you go through the whole four years of the school

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Speaker 2: lunch program under labor there were lots of criticisms, including

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Speaker 2: seven different food safety investigations, none of which were into

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Speaker 2: label or compass.

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Speaker 1: The problem you've got, though, is that Labour had one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six supplies. Up until last year, there

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty six suppliers. Your cust cut cost

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Speaker 1: model only retained two of them, and now one of

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Speaker 1: them has fallen over. Doesn't look great.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's not true. Actually, the School Lunch Collective has

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Speaker 2: over twenty Zealand suppliers that they called together, many of

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Speaker 2: which supply through Gilmore's. If you saw the launch that

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Speaker 2: we did here at the Beehive near the middle of

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Speaker 2: the end of last year, you know we had the

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Speaker 2: names and representatives of all those different companies. So the

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Speaker 2: School Lunch Collective has always been a real showcase of

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Speaker 2: New Zealand food business. Rather than just two supplies, there's

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Speaker 2: actually multiple.

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Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is of the supplies, existing supplies

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty six the only two to be

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Speaker 1: retained with these two. That's correct, is it not?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's that is right and now and but no,

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Speaker 2: because you know, well what you're saying is true as

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Speaker 2: far as it goes. If you want to win that argument, congratulations,

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Speaker 2: But I just make the point that doesn't say so.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but doesn't that say something about the

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Speaker 1: people who were doing the checks and balances to make

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Speaker 1: sure this thing was actually going to fly?

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Speaker 2: Well, not necessarily. But again, I don't want to go

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Speaker 2: into pointing the finger at anyone to say that. I

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Speaker 2: think in the fullness of time, all the details will

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Speaker 2: come out. We practice open government and I think people

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Speaker 2: will judge that we've actually acted well here all right.

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Speaker 1: Well, we'll have to wait and see. David Semill, thank

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Speaker 1: you very much for your time. That's the act party leader.

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Speaker 1: He's the one that's been lumped with the well, it's

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Speaker 1: the thankless task of trying to feed our kids. For

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Speaker 1: more from hither Duplessy Allen Drive listen live to news talks.

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