School lunch saga: Marmite sandwiches and ‘girls doing the cooking’ as David Seymour, Christopher Luxon, Winston Peters debate school lunches

THREE KEY FACTS

• Prime Minister Christopher Luxon suggested parents who did not like the provided school lunches could make a Marmite sandwich and apple for their children
• Associate Education Minister David Seymour says he expects problems with the school lunch programme to be resolved by Term 2.
• Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Luxon was “blind to the effects of poverty” and was trying to sabotage the lunch programme.

On Tuesday morning, the Marmite sandwich and apple solution to the school lunch crisis was deployed.

As the school lunches schemozzle entered its fifth week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon released a solution: let them eat Marmite sandwiches and an apple, just as he had for all those years at school back in the day.

There was a wee tang of a focus group finding about this tactic, putting it back on to parents to make a sandwich if the school lunch didn’t cut the mustard.

The other National MPs were quick to pick up on the script.

Health Minister Simeon Brown’s idea of a good school lunch? A Marmite sandwich and an apple. Brown’s gourmet option was a honey and cheese sandwich.

He noted it was not to everybody’s taste but insisted it was the lunch of the champion. He later sent photographic evidence of himself making a honey and cheese sandwich for his lunch (plain white bread, a cheaper brand of honey and a spread that was not butter).

Health Minister Simeon Brown makes his cheese and honey sandwich as debate on school lunch programme rolls on.

Chris Bishop added cheese to the script. His lunch idea was a Marmite and cheese sandwich and an apple. He added you could mix things up – maybe ham salad or chicken, maybe a nectarine or banana. None of them suggested the king of all sandwiches: the chip sandwich, carb on carb. Too unhealthy, presumably.

Luxon fended away questions about why this wonderful sandwich and apple option was not what was being offered in the school lunch programme if it was the best option.

The very odd thing is that when Associate Education Minister David Seymour first set out his revamped school lunch programme in May last year, the simple sandwich was indeed the solution.

In a social media post on May 8, Seymour posted: “We’ll be feeding kids in schools the fruit and sandwiches their parents would give them, not woke food like quinoa and sushi.”

He ended the post “bon appetit”.

The reason it didn’t end up happening was because he was booed out of town by schools and health groups who said a nutritious hot lunch was in order, just as schools were already providing to the children. Suppliers also assured him hot lunches could be done just as cheaply.

So hot lunches won the battle but are now losing the war, because of the unfortunate tendency to get burnt, go cold, or end up with plastic melted into them.

Luxon said Seymour was responsible for the decisions around the school lunch programme and ensuring the contracts to deliver it were met.

He had told Seymour to sort it out, Seymour had assured him he would and had issued instructions for it all to be fixed by Term 2.

Not before there was a lot of debate about it.

Deputy PM Winston Peters one-upped the Marmite sandwich gang on the nostalgia front when he set out his prescription for a good food in schools programme.

He recalled the days when “poorer Māori families in largely Māori schools nevertheless provided the food for their children every day, with the older students doing the labour – the males – and the girls doing the cooking”.

Within seconds of sitting down, Nicola Willis leaned over and appeared to make it clear what she thought about the latter part of that.

There was a meeting-at-dawn duel between Education Minister Erica Stanford and her associate, Seymour. Stanford said she had asked Seymour to meet to discuss it.

Seymour missed the meeting, saying it was because his caucus meeting, which he chaired, had taken too long.

He denied it was a summons, just a regular meeting and then said he answered to the Prime Minister.

There was Seymour’s answer to Labour MP Jan Tinetti’s question about reports of plastic melting into food: “Plastic containers melting into food is not part of the programme.” Amazing.

There was his explanation of how it happened: an investigation discovered the cause was overheating the containers in an oven that was too hot. What a revelation.

The war over the hot lunches is the reason this PR blitz for the sandwich is now under way.

Things are at a pivot point when it comes to being on the right side of public thinking.

Either the Government comes out looking perfectly reasonable for pushing a lunch that most parents would consider perfectly suitable – or it risks looking as if its attempts to trim costs have gone too far.

By and large, the public understands a government having to cut costs in a hard economic environment. However, there are always cases where it might simply look like petty penny-pinching. That is the case, especially if the savings are negligible, the perceived benefits of the programme are strong and if those who are copping it are children.

Where it will end, nobody knows. But a Marmite sandwich and apple may not stop the headlines.