‘Joy and nourishment’ gone: Hidden impact of new school lunch programme

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

It might be saving money, but the social impact of David Seymour’s new school lunch initiative is proving costly in some of our most deprived communities. Nadine Roberts reports.

It looks like a dying street, with many of its shop fronts masked by roller doors - except for one.

Inside several pairs of hands work to make burgers, including those of Opposition leader Chris Hipkins.

“I had a pie on Friday,” Te Ōraka Shirley Intermediate student Thomas tells him shyly. “But you didn’t get tomato sauce?” Hipkins replies.

Ostensibly he’s making lunch to thank the team at Nourish Ōraka, a Christchurch community enterprise that delivered more than 270,000 lunches to two local schools in the space of four years.

But it’s also a PR opportunity for Hipkins, as Associate Education Minister David Seymour continues to come under fire for his new school lunch model that caused the enterprise to shut up shop.

Politics aside, there’s a sad silence as the team sits down for a last supper.

“I really, really loved it here,” the former kitchen manager says.

It’s nothing like what Labour’s Christchurch East MP Reuben Davidson said he’d seen when he spoke in Parliament last June.

“You walk in through the door, you have no idea what’s going on inside, but it’s a bustling, busy kitchen,” he told the House.

“The radio’s on … The garage door’s rolled up out the back. There’s a view out to the park. It makes it absolutely safe for people to spend time there… That’s community.”

Established in 2021 under the Labour government, the Ka Ora, Ka Ako free school lunch programme became a focus for Seymour, who announced in May last year the Government would retain the programme - but at a significantly reduced cost.

At the time Seymour, promised to feed the same number of students and extend the scheme to 10,000 preschoolers with the $107m savings a centralised system would provide.

Where lunches had cost between $5.97 and $8.90 to supply, Seymour has attempted to slash the cost to $3 where possible (some internal models receive an extra $1), saying it would still be a “like for like” experience for students.

The efficiency drive meant 140 delivery suppliers like Nourish Ōraka were impacted, according to Seymour’s estimations in a September Cabinet paper.

Currently, 69 suppliers provide school lunches in addition to schools where lunches are made on site. Of those, the biggest are Compass Group NZ and Libelle Group, who form part of The School Lunch Collective.

The collective’s bulk meals are prepared and cooked in Hamilton and distributed frozen to 22 kitchens around New Zealand to be thawed, heated and delivered.

Schools with students in year 7 and up began the new model this year. Primary schools that cater only to children in year 6 and under can continue with their current supplier until next year.

Seymour says he has “immense sympathy” for those suppliers affected. “However, as the Associate Minister of Education, I have a duty to the taxpayer to deliver the school lunch programme in the most cost-effective way.”

Community impact

In a suburb with the second largest number of Kainga Ora owned homes and an average of 4% unemployment, the advent of Nourish Ōraka was welcomed by the community.

Founded by Rebecca Roper-Gee and Phillipa Weir in 2021, the social community enterprise was set up to enable mothers who had been out of the workforce for a significant period of time to gain confidence and learn skills.

Roper-Gee particularly wanted to appeal to mothers with school age children, train them up, and help to continue the cycle when they went on to new jobs.

Following the Government’s announcement, six staff were made redundant at the end of last year.

Roper-Gee said it “was too hard” to continue when they had previously been providing lunch and morning tea for around $6 per student.

The five employees Stuff spoke to haven’t been able to find employment, despite their job-seeking efforts. One even applied to Compass NZ Ltd.

“It’s especially hard trying to find work that fits in with school hours,” one mother said. “Here it was great. If I had a sick child it was no problem. It’s really hard to find that anywhere else, and there’s just not many jobs like that here.”

School children were also able to make money by washing dishes.

More than that, Roper-Gee wanted the enterprise to have a positive impact in the local community. Any leftover lunches were redistributed within the community - including a Kapa Haka group and an after school weekly meeting where children could come and talk about any issues they were experiencing.

Scraps were also used in a local chicken rescue operation.

“We just had next to no waste,” Roper-Gee says. “And even though we worked really hard not to have leftover lunches by making sure the students liked what they got, when we did, we gave it to those that needed it. We even had staff who would drop leftover meals off to people in community housing.”

Davidson says the loss of Nourish Ōraka has been felt across the entire community.

“It was a business that local people worked in,” he says. “It supported local kids who could come in here and get after school jobs. There were a number of people who used this as a pathway back into work. So there were so many positive things that came out of this business, and all of those go because this business goes.”

For others in the community who voluntarily helped out whenever needed, there’s anger at the new model.

Toni Orchard moved to Shirley after she lost her home in the Christchurch earthquake.

“This community is like a warm fuzzy blanket being wrapped around you,” she says. “And Nourish Ōraka brought joy and nourishment to it.”

Orchard says, on a street where most of the shops are closed, it became a focal point for the community to drop in, with everyone giving help when it was needed.

“And now it’s gone … it’s a sad loss. It’s unemployment - children are missing out and it just makes it harder on this community.”

Hipkins says Labour didn’t just set up the free school lunch programme to feed students.

“It was also about creating jobs, connecting schools with communities, and actually dealing with overall well being for the kids and for their families,” he says. “I think we’ve lost a lot of that with the cut price lunches that the Government’s now delivering”.

Austerity

Seymour says under the current economic conditions “it was impossible” to justify the old school lunch programme “when it’s possible to deliver the programme at half the cost”.

“We have embraced commercial expertise, used government buying power, and generated supply chain efficiencies to realise over $130m of annual cost savings.”

He doesn’t believe taxpayer funded school lunches should also be a vehicle to support charitable initiatives.

“The Government cannot spend twice as much to support or prop up businesses and charities when its real goal is to deliver affordable and nutritious school lunches for children”.

When asked if he considered the social impact of the new model on organisations like Nourish Ōraka, his response is clear.

“Their job is to do their business. Our job is to deliver healthy school lunches to children at the most competitive price and the best quality. We’ve done our job. They are still free to seek work and make the most of their time as well.”

Roper-Gee is weighing up just that, and trying to work out a new direction for Nourish Ōraka, including the possibility of preparing $5 meals for the many people she sees struggling in her community.

She’s worried kids might not be getting the food they need with the new school lunches.

“We’re hearing there’s so much waste because the kids won’t eat them.”

Back at farewell lunch, Te Ōraka Shirley Intermediate student Nistassia tells Hipkins that she’s one of them.

“The new meals often make me feel sick. Sometimes they’re cold and watery, and there’s no morning tea.”

Nistassia says lots of pupils in her class can’t afford to bring food to school, but they still won’t eat some of the lunches.

Seymour recently admitted at a press conference that there had been “teething” problems.

“In the first week they got some timing wrong and I understand there’s been some complaints, particularly in Rotorua,” he said.

Shirley Primary School principal Alistair Sim is hoping those issues are resolved before his students receive School Lunch Collective meals next year.

Even so, based on what he’s seen, Sim says he wants his school to stay with the status quo.

“The meals I have seen appear to be unappetizing, visually unappealing and significantly lower in quality than what Nourish Ōraka and University of Canterbury Student’s Association have provided us with,” he told Stuff.

“Our lunches are eaten during the day and any leftover lunches are refrigerated and either eaten during the afternoon by children who are still hungry or taken home to be eaten.”

Community values aside, Sim thinks the new model needs work if it’s going to succeed.

“From what I have seen moving forward with the School Lunch Collective in its current form would be a significant backwards step in terms of quality of food and also there’s a likelihood of significant waste and disengagement.”