Chris Hipkins calls on PM to compel David Seymour to address school lunch programme issues

Labour leader Chris Hipkins is encouraging Act leader David Seymour to accept the changes to the lunch programme have failed and to release data detailing the delivery and food wastage issues. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Labour leader Chris Hipkins is calling on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to compel David Seymour to address issues spawning within his new-look free school lunches programme.

Hipkins made the comments to media from Papatoetoe Intermediate School in South Auckland, where he said he had spoken to the principal and been told the students had gone from having “fresh, healthy meals” every day when Labour was in Government to receiving an inadequate and unreliable lunch service after Seymour as Associate Education Minister cut $130 million from the programme amid the Government’s cost-reduction efforts.

“Kids are having butter chicken again today, I understand that’s several days in a row now they’ve been having butter chicken,” Hipkins said today.

“The kids are pretty disappointed and there’s a big increase in food wastage, so a lot of kids who were previously getting a free healthy lunch each day aren’t eating the food.”

Hipkins referenced previous media reports about Papatoetoe Intermediate raising concerns about the lack of “halal-certified” meals, after the school was delivered ham sandwiches.

“I think we should show more respect to our young people than that,” Hipkins said.

Act leader David Seymour has defended the school lunch programme. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Halal, an Arabic word for “permitted”, refers to practices permitted under Islam. There are particular Halal dietary standards and practices for preparing food, such as a prohibition on the eating of pork.

Compass, the organisation responsible for providing lunches to schools as part of the Government programme, said the meals were “halal-friendly”.

This meant the meals had halal-certified beef and chicken and did not contain pork. It also had strict cleaning procedures. However, as its production facility was not halal-certified, it instead used the “halal-friendly” label.

“Claiming a meal is religiously permissible for groups of students when it isn’t breaks a trust we have fought long and hard to establish with communities who have long called Aotearoa home,” Labour’s ethnic communities spokeswoman Jenny Salesa said.

Seymour has said to go fully halal-certified “would require the massive expense of separate preparation facilities, packaging and distribution processes” and he didn’t believe the expense would be justified.

Hipkins encouraged Seymour to accept the changes to the lunch programme had failed and urged him to release data detailing the delivery and food wastage issues.

“David Seymour’s got to admit that this has just been a total disaster.

“If he can’t do that, then I think the Prime Minister should do something about it for him.”

Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.