Seymour has put problems with the delivery and quality of food down to teething problems
From March 31, the lunch programme for about 242,000 school children will start to be extended to low-equity early learning services
Governments can live and die by an accumulation of small failings, and the issue of school lunches has started to bedevil this Government.
Alas, poor David Seymour has found himself in charge of and under daily fire for something he doesn’t think should exist inthe first place: the state-funded school lunch scheme.
Before the election, Seymour was opposed to the state funding the school lunch programme for lower income schools. National, too, had believed it should be scaled back after being expanded under Labour.
Yet they got themselves into a position of promising to feed as many children as Labour’s scheme, courtesy of PM Christopher Luxon saying on the campaign that it would not be cut. It is difficult to campaign on taking away something that people are already getting, especially when that something is lunch for a school kid.
The newly-fledged Government had little choice, so Seymour embarked on his mission to do the same for less — $130 million a year less.
He has subsequently learned the truth of the adage that you get what you pay for.
What it has paid for is a stream of headlines about how bad the food is in the month over which it has been under way.
Seymour is now stuck in a vortex of endless complaints: there are not enough lunches, there are enough lunches but the kids won’t eat them so they get thrown away. The lunches arrive too late, too small, too burnt, every day is butter chicken day, and the chickpea curry only has two chickpeas in it.
Then there was the issue of whether food described as “halal-friendly” was actually halal. It was not, it was halal-adjacent if you like, or pretty halal as Steven Joyce might have said. The halal-friendly options, which allegedly included ham, were not even that.
School lunches at Whangarei Intermediate School arrived late, leaking and burnt. Photo / Yolisa Tswanya
The argument Seymour put up in response was it should not be on the state to go to great expense to cater to every dietary need. Maybe he has a point, but if that is the view, perhaps it’s best not to promise that you will be able to cater to halal, to vegans, and all other comers in the first place.
Whether Seymour cares that much about the outcry is a different matter.
He claimed the issue was being politicised (yes, a little bit rich) and — fairly enough — suggested people wait to see the results of a review and give things more time to settle in.
Whether he thinks it is all because of the politicisation or not, it is becoming a political problem.
If things do not get rectified the school lunch outcry does carry risk for the Government — not least chalking up an F in what is effectively its year of proving it can deliver.
Luxon has tagged the year as the one in which his Government has to deliver to prove to the people it merits a second term.
The school lunch saga is a prime example of how smaller failures risk becoming emblematic of failures to deliver for a Government. There is a fair bit of pride on the line over this — as there should be.
This Government — all three parties of it — campaigned hard on pointing out the various failings and shortcomings of the last Labour Government and primped their own credentials to do it better.
That’s why you don’t see anyone from National leaping to Seymour’s defence: they’re happy to let him carry the can for this one. His mess, his clean-up job.
Illustration / Guy Body
It is also why Labour’s Chris Hipkins has been quick to leap on the rolling debacle, clearly hoping it will turn into the coalition Government’s KiwiBuild.
Labour has so far called for Seymour to resign over the issue (once he’s done resigning over other things, such as the Treaty Principles Bill, of course).
Hipkins has visited schools that have issues with the programme. He has also noted when Seymour was a big critic of the 6% wastage rates of school lunches when Seymour was in Opposition. The waste rate was being reported as being much higher than that — albeit based on anecdotes from schools rather than data, which has yet to be released.
It’s not often issues such as a monotonous diet of butter chicken or grey meatballs threaten to harm a Government’s record.
National will not be unhappy Seymour is the one having to front on it. They are possibly even enjoying it a bit, seeing Seymour skirting close to tripping up.
It does leave a bit of egg on the face for Seymour, courtesy of his boasting loud and long about his certainty he could deliver tasty and nutritious lunches for a dime.
It’s the classic over-promise, under-deliver trap.
Whether Seymour cares very much about that outcry is a different matter. It is not an issue he has staked his own policy platform or reputation on.
For him, the more important delivery tick in education is around truancy: something he has campaigned on and made a lot of noise about addressing. He also knows that if you can ride things out for long enough, interest will wane.
He knows he’s up against seasoned, battle-hardened groups — schools and teachers know how to draw attention.
He’s also up against those suppliers who lost business when Seymour moved to the current mass-production model.
He is clearly betting there is a chunk of the public who see it all as moaning about a free lunch, or are at least willing to give it time to settle in before making a judgment.
He called for a “reality check” this week, suggesting people waited until a review lands rather than rely on anecdotal stories. That, too, is fair enough, but there are a lot of anecdotal stories.
On occasion, Seymour’s response to the school lunch complaints has been typically Seymourian.
He makes sure he reminds people the meals are “free” as much as possible. He also made sure he pointed out that about 75% of children were not getting these “free” meals, and their parents were having to pay for their lunches. Divide and conquer and all that.
In between urging people to calm down while “teething problems” are worked through, he has issued not-very-subtle suggestions those children getting the food should be counting their blessings.
On Friday, in response to the Principals' Federation urging him to revert to the old scheme, Seymour noted one principal had complained about getting butter chicken 11 days in a row.
“Well, there’s a lot of people in the world that if you said, ‘how would you like 11 free butter chickens’, their response wouldn’t be a complaint.”
Then came the day pies and Pita Pit were served up because the suppliers were struggling to deliver.
Seymour tried to recast pie and pita day from a symbol of failure into one of celebration, claiming it would serve to celebrate the millionth school lunch under the new scheme (presumably including those delivered too late and those which were thrown out).
That was spin so heroic the Black Caps should recruit him immediately.
