I find David Seymour decision on food in schools just disgusting.
John MacDonald John MacDonald: This is a terrible thing to say, but it’s true wrote on NewstalkZB this superb piece of analysis:
It’s because of us. Those of us who aren’t living in poverty and aren’t one of those invisible people who feature in these latest stats which show we’re going nowhere on this front.
We’re the reason. Because, if we’re honest, we don’t really give a damn. Unless we’re in that boat, we don’t really care as much as we might think we do.
If we did, we’d be demanding to know at election time what politicians are going to actually do for the 156,000 Kiwi kids living in hardship. They’re the latest numbers. If we really cared, we’d be grilling politicians on how they’re going to get them out of hardship.
But we don’t. Every piece of policy we look at it and want to know what’s in it for us.
We listen to the Prime Minister’s state of the nation speech, and we don’t flinch when we realise that he hasn’t mentioned child poverty once.
There was nothing in there about child poverty. There’s a lot of talk about fixing the economy —as there should be— but, as the Children’s Commissioner is saying today, kids can’t wait while the Government tries to fix the economy and action is needed now.
She’s right. But it won’t happen because we’re not demanding that it happens.
- The Post wrote further about this: Poverty stats show broken promises to children – what happens next is up to us | The Post
- There has been much focus on the junk being served up to children https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/542843/nutritionist-finds-list-of-issues-after-visiting-auckland-schools-delivering-lunch-programme.
- Another article covered Govt must reverse school lunch cuts — anti-poverty advocate | Q+A 2025.
The basic issue is that a misguided attempt to take food out of the hands of local solutions by handing the contract to a multinational food company has failed. In the name of money saving. Yuk. Taken the money off politician’s cost of operating, not our kids stomachs. Seymour needs to admit this has been a failure and to go back to what was working before.
To the critics who are saying all sorts of awful things about families needing to supply their own lunches I say go and focus on what you can do to help. Give up your keyboard warrior behaviour and show our kids, our future, some love and attention.
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