David Seymour misses school lunch please explain meeting

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Education Minister Erica Stanford says she wants to hear how David Seymour will fix issues with free school lunches, but Seymour says he's kept all of Cabinet up to date on the programme.

Education Minister Erica Stanford is seeking an explanation from David Seymour about issues with the free school lunch programme.

Stanford refused to express confidence in Seymour, who is associate education minister.

The latest issue with the programme saw school children in Murchison given meals coated in melted plastic.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour did not show up for a meeting with Education Minister Erica Stanford, after she called for reassurance and an explanation about his changes to the free school lunches programme.

The two ministers were due to meet on Tuesday morning. They meet regularly, but Stanford on Tuesday morning said she specifically asked Seymour to come to this meeting with information about how he plans to fix problems with the programme.

A spokesperson for Seymour told Stuff the ACT Party caucus meeting ran over time and the meeting was being rescheduled.

When pressed on Seymour missing the meeting, Stanford said she was looking forward to meeting on Wednesday.

David Seymour discusses the school lunch investigation, admitting to failures in food quality control after burnt plastic meals were sent to children, and outlines plans to prevent further issues.

“Ministers diaries are very complex, things shift around all the time but I am looking forward to our meeting tomorrow,” she said.

“This is a regularly scheduled meeting, I meet with the minister all the time and one of the items on the agenda was the school lunch program.

“Minister’s priorities shift all the time.”

On his way to Parliament on Tuesday, Seymour told Stuff he hadn’t needed to offer reassurance to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about the issues. However, he said he’d pro-actively kept all of Cabinet - including Stanford - up to date as he oversaw a cost savings initiative to save more than $150 million on lunches.

Their meeting came just days after school children in Murchison were given meals coated in melted plastic. Seymour said this was a particular concern.

“Basically they overheated and overcooked some lunches. That was a major failure and we’re taking that very seriously,” he said.

Education Minister Erica Stanford won’t say if she has confidence in David Seymour’s handling of school lunches.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, Stanford wouldn’t say she had confidence that Seymour could bring an end to the school lunch mishaps.

“Well, that’s why I’m meeting with him today - to find out what the plan is,” she said.

She said she expected that the free school lunches should be consistently reaching a higher standard.

“I think, if we are spending taxpayer money we have an obligation to provide a quality service. I’ve asked David Seymour for a meeting this morning to go through some of the issues on the school lunch programme and to make sure they are being cleared up,” she said.

This meeting comes as the Government faces mounting calls from principals and parents to go back to the previous system, which saw many schools prepare cooked meals in-house.

Meanwhile, Luxon was downplaying some of the concerns from parents and teachers on Tuesday.

He said parents who were dissatisfied with the new school lunch programme should “make a marmite sandwich and put an apple in a bag”.

“Parents can also provide, under parental responsibility, lunches for their kids. It’s not an unreasonable ask. If you can’t, if you won’t - well, I’m not having children that are hungry at school and therefore not learning. Therefore, we need a school lunches programme,” he said.

Unlike Stanford, Luxon indicated he did have confidence in Seymour as associate education minister.

“Yes, there are challenges where some of the food is not up to scratch, but David's working his way through the issues, and I trust him to fix it,” Luxon said.