Seymour is wrecking the school lunch program

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, February 24th, 2025 - 26 comments
Categories: david seymour, education, poverty, schools, the praiseworthy and the pitiful - Tags:

The news concerning David Seymour’s reorganisation of school lunches gets worse and worse.

Seymour has shown clearly that not only is he completely lacking in understanding but he is proverbially full of it.

Back in 2021 he complained about how many school lunches were being wasted. In a press release which has now been deleted from Act’s website he said:

“The Government needs to start looking at evidence and data before it rushes out policy which is nothing more than a marketing campaign,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“The Waikato Times has revealed that up to 1500 lunches from Labour’s free school lunches programme are going to waste each day.

“Jacinda Arden wanted free school lunches because she thought it was good marketing.

“The wastage goes to show the policy is not working, either because there is not as much need as the Government assumed, or the quality being delivered is putting kids off. Either way, the waste needs to stop.

He then complained that 10,000 school lunches were being wasted every day. I said at the time that when you think that a million school lunches are prepared each week this accounts for 5% of all prepared lunches.  If there is a restaurant out there which has less than 5% wastage I would be pleased to know about it.

Seymour then promised that he could provide a cheaper but better option. Cheaper and better at the same time.

How is he doing?

Well the scheme is now cheaper. The Government cut the cost by $107m from its $323m annual budget.

Is it better? The response must be a resounding no.

Radio New Zealand did something radical. It visited Massey Primary School in West Auckland and asked some of the students what they thought about School lunches Seymour style. This is what they said:

Some Year 8 students told Checkpoint they are sick of the same thing for the past week.

“I don’t really like the lunch, it’s pretty bad, I hate it,” said one student.

Another said they prefer hot lunches.

When asked what they would eat instead of the lunch one student said, “oxygen, I’d prefer not eating than eating something over and over again.”

One Year 8 student said the portions could be bigger for them.

“Because we’re the oldest in the school so we should eat more.”

Many prefer the lunches they got last year.

“I’ll eat anything just as long as you guys don’t redo it.”

“Brownies, mac and cheese, chicken curry, chicken katsu, all the good lunches back then.”

At lunchtime, the kids were far more interested in queuing up to buy an ice block for $1 than the wraps.

By the end of lunchtime, the containers are still stacked full with 370 wraps left over. Only 29 percent have been eaten.

Lincoln Heights Primary School principal Leisha Byrnes has also complained, saying that not only are the meals terrible, but they have had butter chicken delivered ten days out of 15. And the food wastage is horrific.

Whangārei Intermediate principal Hayley Read complained that the school only received half of the required meals one day recently, the spaghetti and meatballs arrived burnt, and seals of the packaging were peeling off raising questions about how safe the food was to eat.

Kamo Intermediate only received half of their order one day, which meant staff members had to go to the local bakery to buy sandwiches for those who missed out.

Schools have to provide significant extra resource to receive, divide up and deliver the lunches, and then deal with empty containers and wastage.

And the changes have destroyed numerous cottage industries formed by locals who wanted to make sure their kids were receiving good meals.

According to Labour MP Arena Williams:

The Government dumped a nimble, locally run school lunch programme that delivered hot, fresh meals on time, and replaced it with a centralised, one-size-fits-none food factory that leaves many children without lunch.

If it was David Seymour’s goal to take food away from hungry kids, then he has exceeded his own expectations. My guess is, it’s actually his goal to run the programme down and lose community support, so he can ultimately scrap it.

The number of times he has claimed that his insipid bulk rations would deliver the same outcomes to students as Labour’s healthy school lunches, shows how out of touch he is. It is now widely apparent that schools are getting a much less reliable, lower-quality lunch.

This episode highlights the problem when you rely completely on market forces to provide something and concentrate on cost. You get something substandard as the corporates seek to cut costs to improve profitability. And resourcing local groups to provide for local kids provides a much better product, creates employment and improves education standards.

Seymour does not care for this and clearly if it was up to him school lunches would be defunded. It seems that he is undermining the fund so that it falls out of favour and can then be quietly cancelled.

Shame on him. May he be forced to eat unsafe butter chicken that has sat in a container for hours on end ten days in a row.

26 comments on “Seymour is wrecking the school lunch program ”

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  1. Tiger Mountain 1
    24 February 2025 at 9:36 am

    Be interesting to see some research into how many “air miles” are involved in moving the slops around the country, several school Principals have mentioned two stage transport that includes air! Take that all you local woke kitchens and producers…

    If David’s yummy foil tray that he publicly sampled was not chef cooked it would be surprising, I remember when President Obama was caught out at Flint Michigan drinking bottled water meant to be from the restored local supply of previously contaminated local water.

    Micky summation is quite likely right, make the lunches inedible then stop them altogether.

  2. Sanctuary 2
    24 February 2025 at 9:41 am

    The assault on the school lunch program is entirely ideological and rooted deeply in a hatred of the poor where poverty itself is a crime.

    First crime – it gave the poor a nice thing. The poor cannot have nice things. That is an affront to wealth. Using the same logic as vagrancy laws, the poor need to be policed and punished for the crime of poverty.

    Second crime – It was a nimble, locally run school lunch programme. The primary purpose of ACT and modern conservatism is to loot the state on behalf of their donors. A program that did not use taxpayer money to enrich a centralised corporate sponsor simply cannot be allowed to stand.

    Third crime – Also that it was a nimble, locally run school lunch programme. This is a spitefulness motivated by the same Jesuit like desire to stamp out the heresy of collectivism thay has led to a frantic re-writing of the covid response by our neoliberal soaked access media. Successful government action and community initiative makes a mockery of the prevailing ideology of relentless narcissism and atomisation in persuit of personal enrichment in a hyper-individulaised society. The relentless jackboot of the justification of ruling class greed must be made to stamp on the neck of the everyone all the time, forever.

  3. Psycho Milt 3
    24 February 2025 at 10:07 am

    I assume the wrecking is deliberate strategy rather than incompetence, given his previously expressed opinions. It's an ugly thing to watch happening, alright.

    • Tiger Mountain 3.1
      24 February 2025 at 10:13 am

      Hopefully no kids get sick along the way, cook/chill transported meals are notorious for the likes of Listeria in aged care and other institutions.

    • David 3.2
      24 February 2025 at 11:26 am

      I think you are right, however if Seymour was honest and upfront about this and said he/ACT are flat out against school lunches that would be one thing. But to sabotage the school lunch program in order for it to be unworkable is disingenuous

  4. Michael Scott 4
    24 February 2025 at 10:11 am

    Perhaps Seymours plan is to make the lunches so bad the parents step up and begin to feed their kids

  5. Populuxe 5
    24 February 2025 at 10:45 am

    It's a classic neoliberal pattern. Deliberately make a mess of it. Privatise it. Let private company run it into the ground for profit.

  6. Stan 6
    24 February 2025 at 10:53 am

    Would the journalists please start doing their job and specifically ask Seymour how much of the money they pay Compass (overseas company) is taken away overseas as profit to their shareholders? I think we should know.

    • Ed1 6.1
      24 February 2025 at 11:31 am

      Seymour will carefully not know that – or imply that they may well be making a loss. What reporters can reasonably expect answers to is whether any increases to charges have been agreed, and when the contract ends, and whether there have been any changes to the previously agreed basis or amount payments to Compass since meals started being delivered. Also how much the Ministry spent on negotiating the contract. OIAs to the department for their advice would also be good to have. Has David Seymour ever met Elon Musk?

  7. Darien Fenton 7
    24 February 2025 at 11:01 am

    I saw somewhere that MPI is investigating school lunches. But wait, MPI has had staff cuts too!

  8. gsays 8
    24 February 2025 at 11:11 am

    A wee point of order…

    The numbers are out to the tune of $8.9 million dollars.

    " That same day, Stuff revealed the meals advertised as halal are not being prepared in halal-certified environments. Then BusinessDesk revealed Compass had been awarded a bonus $8.9 million contract to supply additional food items, like muesli bars, yoghurt and fruit, cutting into Seymour’s projected savings."

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/02/19/compass-awarded-multimillion-dollar-lunch-deal-despite-controversial-history/#:~:text=That%20same%20day%2C%20Stuff%20revealed,cutting%20into%20Seymour's%20projected%20savings.

    Surely this is an issue we could hear reassuring noises from the opposition about.

  9. Patricia Bremner 9
    24 February 2025 at 11:44 am

    I think Seymour hoped this would distract from TTPB and the Regulations Bill.

    If this was a Labour enterprise, we would have had a whole history blow by blow.

    Mountain Tui has an informative article on Facebook and Subtract for further reading.

    Local MPs should have endless questions asked by concerned parents and children.

  10. joe90 10
    24 February 2025 at 11:48 am

    he is proverbially full of it.

    …and lies…

    .

    "It's pretty bad, I hate it," one year 8 student in Auckland told RNZ about the new school lunches.

    But Minister David Seymour has moved from saying feedback was mixed, to being quoted by Newsroom saying "we're getting a lot of feedback from principals who actually say they believe that their children think that the food is better than the previous offerings".

    On Wednesday, RNZ set out to find out more.

    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2502/S00097/no-official-record-of-school-lunch-feedback.htm

  11. Mike the Lefty 11
    24 February 2025 at 12:24 pm

    It was obvious that, given his failure to scupper the scheme completely, he would sabotage it.

    Seymour is like a petulant child who hates playing in the sand but will piss in the sandbox to ruin it for others.

  12. Phillip ure 12
    24 February 2025 at 5:17 pm

    A solution to the school lunch issue:

    Consult with five different vegan chefs..

    Give them the brief ..and then ask them to come up with their best shot…

    ..and then serve a different/delicious/tasty lunch each day…

    The benefits:

    1)..good quality healthy tasty food served each school day..

    2)..no need to cater for hala/whatever diets…vegan is good for all..

    3)..cheap/easy to produce in bulk..(chickpeas/lentils etc..)

    4)..teaching/showing children how to eat healthy..

    What's not to love..?

  13. Mac1 13
    24 February 2025 at 5:40 pm

    I wrote about this here on the Standard in three separate comments on this October 25 2024 post, "David Seymour Chooses School Lunches Provider With Questionable Record: Listeria, Horse Meat & Poor Quality".

    The salient points- French municipalities provide chef-quality meals at NZ$3.60, four courses, served at a table over a half hour period- practising manners, etiquette, conversation and communal enjoyment.

    Style and substance, Mr Seymour, both style and substance.

  14. hereni kiwi 14
    1 March 2025 at 5:41 am

    If Seymour thinks these school lunches are so great, let's see him eating them, not just once, but every day he's sitting in the Beehive. Close Bellamys. He and all his Nat colleagues can work through their lunch hour, being served peanut butter sandwiches in the debating chamber.

    That'll save the taxpayer some money.

    Oh, and no drinking of alcohol by MPs allowed.