John,

As more and more problems come to light with the Government’s school lunches programme, one question looms large: does the Prime Minister even care?

The National Government awarded an exclusive school lunches contract to Libelle and Compass despite their shoddy past performances.

When asked why his Government granted them the contract anyway – at the expense of many local jobs and better-received providers, no less – Christopher Luxon had no answer. 

Christopher Luxon isn’t clueless. He isn’t across the details because he simply doesn’t care.

But New Zealanders do care. The latest polling from Talbot Mills shows two thirds of Kiwis want Labour’s school lunches programme back. Even half of the National Party voters surveyed agreed with the statement “overall the new school lunch programme isn’t working”.

Last year more than 51,000 people joined our call to save the school lunches programme. I urge you to join them in calling on the Government to show some leadership and return to locally-made lunches.

Christopher Luxon is quite happy handing $2.9 billion to landlords and $216 million to tobacco companies, but it seems he’s not as interested in providing free, healthy food for hungry Kiwi kids.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Willow-Jean Prime
Spokesperson for Education
labour.org.nz