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