The chickens are clearly coming home to roost.
David Seymour’s campaign to reduce the so called excessive spend on Labour’s school lunches have struck a rather awkward problem. At least for one school recently provided lunches were inedible which basically destroys the whole reason for having them.
From Rachel Graham at Radio New Zealand:
The principal of a Christchurch school served up mouldy mince from the school lunch programme today believes the meals had earlier been returned to the supplier – but not thrown out.
Haeata Community Campus was given rancid, mouldy meals as part of the government’s school lunch programme on Monday.
The school, which covers from Year 1 to 13, said a teacher noticed the meals were off after they had been distributed to a number of children.
Haeata principal Peggy Burrows said they have had some problems before, but nothing this catastrophic.
“A staff member opened it and it was absolutely rancid, covered in furry stuff, completely rotten, and smelt absolutely revolting,” said Burrows.
“So of course we immediately shut the whole lunch programme down, but what we did notice was in the rubbish tin was some children had opened the lunches and there was evidence that some had eaten some of this putrid stuff.”
It looked like the meal was supposed to be a hot meal of mince, potatoes and vegetables, but she said it was completely mouldy and looked putrefied, and stank.
They opened several other cartons and they were also all inedible, she said.
Paradoxically the school has its own commercial kitchen and wanted to make its own meals but the ministry said no on the basis this was a risk to food security. Clearly they should rethink this.
Initially Seymour’s office said it was an operational matter and that questions should be directed to the Ministry.
Then this morning the Deputy Prime Minister decided to go on the offensive. He was interviewed on Radio New Zealand and was utterly, utterly appalling.
He attacked Burrows and said that she was a “frequent flyer in the media” whatever that means. In particular what he said about the incident was “[i]t will be investigated but I also note this particular principal is a frequent flyer in the media complaining about quite a range of government policies… I think people need that context.”
Can someone tell me why people need that context? If you complain about how bad the Government is do you then lose the ability to complain again?
Seymour also tried to blame the school.
Whether that happened through the distributor or whether that happened with a mix up at the school is unclear.”
This particular line was repeated all morning by Radio New Zealand. It is sad to see the state broadcaster cowered into running Government disinformation lines.
Seymour also claimed that there had been no illness as a result that he knew of.
This was immediately contradicted by the mother of a school student then being interviewed and describing how her daughter had eaten a meal and was unwell.
It should be remembered that previously Act and Seymour criticised Labour’s School lunch program for wastage and in particular because the quality being delivered was apparently putting kids off.
Either way, the waste needs to stop, he said. I agree.
The Government will be preying that they can pin this on the school. But it seems even at this stage pretty clear who is to blame.
