Finally a reason to re-elect Labour – Free School Lunches for Children in poverty

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
14
539

FINALLY a reason to re-elect the Labour Party…

Government announces free school lunch trial

The Government has announced a free daily lunch trial to be rolled out at select schools next year.

The trial – which will provide free lunches to Year 1-8 children every school day – will begin in 30 schools from term one next year before expanding to 120 schools in 2021. When the policy is fully rolled out, 21,000 children will benefit.

…as someone who fought for MANAs feed the kids bill, it is joyful to seeing this rolled out.

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Yes, it’s not enough.

Yes, if wages actually paid parents a living wage and yes if the benefit actually gave enough money to feed children on free schools wouldn’t be needed, but let’s not allow the perfect to defeat the good here.

21 000 Children won’t go hungry and while there are still 180 000 more in desperate need, the lives of these 21 000 will be made immeasurably better.

Let’s hope the Government find the courage to expand this programme to every child and let’s make sure the food is nutritious and healthy.

It’s good to finally have a reason to elect this Government.

14 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent. No doubt Soymun Brudges will be along soon to disparage it and say it is tinkering, posturing, ill-thought-through (cont. p94)

  2. Smacks of desperation. They have in my opinion and I’m not alone in this behaved just like National and now they want to “pull a Savage” to try and look like a Socialist party? This little political fig leaf Isn’t hiding the neo liberalism for one second.

    Nice try Labour but no free lunches for you from this voter come 2020.

  4. why not sean we got free lunches in the 60s we got free milk and free fruit in kindergarten and some people even got free tertiary education the ones now getting the pension seems like sour grapes and selfishness to me from some very nasty NZders

    • Nothing is free the State paid and by the 80’s the country was nearly bankrupt with inflation of near 20%. The welfare state is a great thing but having children knowing they cannot be looked after without state help is not to be encouraged .I bet many of these poorly fed children are the same ones not vaccinated and who have poor teeth

    • If this were part of a genuine move to Socialism I’d welcome it. Fact is it looks a lot like political manoeuvring from a govt that’s essentially neo liberal and is facing a very uncertain election come 2020 which is not too far away now.

  5. Good move, but the underlying reasons for children needing school lunches have not been addressed.

    It is a bit like WFF etc, necessary now because wages are so low and what is Labour doing to address that, adding 250k temporary workers of questionable merit, (aka people in cafes and retail) who often pay their own wages to create more NZ new residents involved in scams.

    If so many of the jobs are fake that people are working, then the other mayor issue is that many will never get a real job once gaining permanent residency and so our social services, like our schools and hospitals, are stretched thinner as they no longer need to pretend to have a job and work.

    In many countries ALL children get a hot lunch from their school.

    Labour better than the Natz but seems to not want to recongnise where all this went wrong.

  6. yes our hospitals are suffering thanks to jhonkeys cheap labour immigration policy the whole system is buckling thanks to johns brighter future

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