A busy week at school for David Seymour

The school lunches programme has been retained – and will be extended to some preschoolers. So how is it going to cost $107 million less?

Mōrena, and welcome to The Bulletin for Thursday, May 9.

In today’s edition: The door to more housing has been opened in Wellington, what's holding up Tim Shadbolt's airport honour, and some analysis of tikanga in law schools. But first, it’s been a busy week for one senior minister.

The minister with many hats

David Seymour wears a number of hats, but this week the Act leader has spent much of it donning one labelled “associate minister of education”. He’s primarily in charge of the revival of partner schools, but that work won’t start until later in the year. In the meantime, he’s been busying himself with overhauling the lunch in schools programme, of which details were revealed yesterday. Stuff’s Bridie Witton breaks down the announcement here, explaining that the same number of students that currently access the scheme will continue to do so, but it will cost $107m less than under Labour. That’s despite extending it to include 10,000 preschoolers, with the cost-saving primarily made through ordering items in bulk. The revamped scheme will cost $407m, allowing primary schoolers to continue accessing the school lunches as they are now until the end of 2026, while high schoolers will be fed under an alternative (and cheaper) model. A full refresh for older students will be drawn up later this year with the support of an expert advisory group. In a piece for Newsroom Pro this morning (paywalled), Laura Walters described the reaction to the announcement as largely positive, but notes that state centralisation of the lunch scheme appears to go against what Act traditionally stands for.

A win… for Labour?

The opposition was quick to claim the new announcement as a win, RNZ reported, with education spokesperson Jan Tinetti saying Seymour had failed to get the “cuts to the programme he campaigned on”. In March, The Press reported that Seymour was hoping to cut the scheme by as much as half, prompting concern from families that they could end up missing out. But while Seymour says no student will go hungry under the interim programme, some food providers will lose out. BusinessDesk’s Cécile Meier reported that thousands of jobs could be affected – but the precise number isn’t known. The new bulk-ordered lunches will cover 150,000 students, more than half of the 235,000 who receive the food. One food provider, Belinda Philp from Soul Kitchen, told RNZ’s Checkpoint that she was still “thinking through the ramifications” of the new announcement, but it would impact staff. “That hurts my heart… It has drastically cut our lunches that we supply.” The business currently supplies 300 daily lunches to a local high school, something that will end once the new model’s enforced.

What’s on the menu? And is it ‘woke’?

“It’s out with quinoa and hummus and in with sandwiches and other lunchbox basics,” reported the Herald, paraphrasing an official government press release, while the Act Party Twitter account and Seymour’s personal Facebook page said there would be no more “woke” food like sushi. This Spinoff explainer from March goes into more detail about the kind of lunch items provided by the lunch scheme currently. Christopher Luxon wasn’t happy to be asked about woke foods, wrote the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan, despite it being a line from his coalition partner. For an idea of what many kids are eating this week, check out the menu from Libelle, one of the largest current providers of the school lunch scheme, featuring such “woke items” as Mex mince and ham pizza. The Ministry of Education lists a fixed lunch price of about $5 to $9 per lunch. Under the refreshed scheme, it’ll be more like $3 – a figure that Seymour told reporters even he was surprised by. KidsCan, he said, was only spending $2 per student to provide food in schools. The charity was one of a number of groups consulted by the government when devising the new scheme. Despite the bulk buying, Seymour maintained it would be nutritious. “It will be made up of the sorts of food items thousands of mums and dads put into lunch boxes every day for their kids,” he said. One group that strongly disagreed was Healthcare Coalition Aotearoa, claiming in a statement that the programme “downgrade” would rob children of “nutrition, well-being, immunity and fuel to learn”. 

On the topic of hummus, one Labour MP got into a bit of hot water last night over a since-deleted tweet. Stuff reported that Duncan Webb had shared that Seymour didn’t like hummus because “it’s too close to h@m@s [sic]”. He has since apologised and Chris Hipkins called it “a mistake”. 

A busy week for the minister, and more work to come

Seymour’s official title specifies that he’s the minister responsible for partnership schools, but told The Bulletin that education minister Erica Stanford had asked him to take responsibility for revamping the lunch programme. Earlier this week, he made another non-partnership schools announcement: launching a new online portal to monitor school attendance. The question of whether truancy is really as bad as the government claims is contentious, as this piece from Rachel Judkins on The Spinoff in March examined. This Newsroom piece takes a look at similarities between the coalition’s education policies and ideas put forward by a right-wing think tank. For Seymour, his attention likely now returns to charter schools. Introducing legislation to parliament on the issue is part of the government’s current quarterly action plan which ends on June 30. Seymour told me he was on track to meet that deadline.

To finish, circling back to lunches. If you’re wondering what constitutes a “woke” food item, you’ve come to the right place. The Spinoff’s newly assembled Bureau of Wokeness has analysed the data and compiled a definitive list of woke foods. It’s extremely comprehensive.

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Housing rules in the capital get a long-awaited update

The housing minister has revealed his final decision on Wellington’s District Plan. The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus has the key details, noting that Chris Bishop approved “a series of amendments to radically upzone most of Wellington, allowing tens of thousands of new townhouses and apartments that were previously illegal to build”.

Some proposed changes were shut down, such as the plan to remove ten buildings from the heritage protection schedule (including the Gordon Wilson flats). Unsurprisingly, this is big news in the capital and is splashed across the front page of The Post today. Reporter Erin Gourley has spoken to housing advocates excited by yesterday’s news, with one saying it should lead to cheaper housing in the capital within the next decade.

‘Tikanga battle’ over what should be taught at law schools

There’s been a few headlines this week about the proposed compulsory teaching of tikanga in law schools, stemming from comments made by a senior KC and the dean of law at AUT, with Winston Peters later wading in as well. Waatea News has more on the “tikanga battle”. I attended law school in Auckland about a decade ago and tikanga was a part of my compulsory education then, so it’s interesting that potentially expanding this has suddenly prompted outrage. For some thoughtful analysis, law lecturer Carwyn Jones has written this morning on The Spinoff.

Behind the Story is a new podcast from The Spinoff that goes beyond the bylines. Join The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman every Saturday as she sits down with a staff writer or contributor to gain more insight about a big story on The Spinoff from the week. Listen now.

Click and Collect

• What's holding up Sir Tim Shadbolt's airport honour? Logan Savory at the Southland Tribune takes a look.

• The cost of junior doctors covering workplace shortages has doubled in a year, reports RNZ’s Phil Pennington.

• I’m really enjoying the latest season of Hacks, which you can find on TVNZ+. Here’s an interesting, but sadly partly paywalled, read from The Atlantic.

• A lengthy sitdown interview with James Shaw on RNZ’s new 30 with Guyon Espiner show.

• An extraordinary Steve Braunius report for the Herald (paywalled) as conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn was in court.

• New Zealand Rugby plots to bring Richie Mo’unga home early from Japanese sabbatical.

The Spinoff is looking for a new staff writer – could it be you?

Right now on The Spinoff

"Your agency is taken away". Alex Casey reports what happens when an endometriosis treatment changes without your consent. Two definitive lists from The Spinoff: we reveal which foods are woke and which people in New Zealand are the most powerful. Jane Arthur discusses her favourite funnysad novel for The Spinoff Books Confessional. Georgie Dansey explains the fight to save beloved train service Te Huia.

Pop culture picks, with Alex Casey

The Spinoff senior writer brings you her must reads from the world of pop culture.

• Polygon are calling The Contestant, a documentary about a bonkers 1998 Japanese reality show in which a man was left alone in a room for a year and forced to survive only off magazine competition winnings, the most twisted thing you'll see this year. It's not out in NZ yet, so in the meantime you can listen to This American Life delving into the fascinating saga back in 2014.

• As if it wasn't quite dystopian enough to watch the rich and famous parade about in ancient beads while anti-genocide protesters were arrested outside the Met Gala, there was also the curious case of Katy Perry. Fans (and even her own mum) frothed over her lush floral gown in photographs from the carpet, but there was just one problem: she didn't even attend and it was all AI.

• On a cheerier note, NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis did a surprise gig at a Christchurch wedding for one of his superfans over the weekend. The footage is a true delight, as is this detail: "Lummis stayed for almost three hours and had a meal as well."

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.

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