Phil Palfrey: Kaitao Intermediate School Principal on school lunch provider being placed into liquidation

Another push for the Government to cut its losses with its revamped school lunches. 

The Libelle Group - which is contracted to deliver about 125-thousand meals each day - is in liquidation.  

The responsibility will now fall solely on Compass Group -- but Minister in Charge David Seymour says that won't impact lunch deliveries. 

Rotorua's Kaitao Intermediate School Principal, Phil Palfrey told Andrew Dickens he has little faith it won't create further issues. 

He wishes the Government could return to the original programme -- and believes the country can afford to do so. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Overheated, late bland, beige, melted, plastic covered food. We've heard
all the headlines about the school lunch program, and now
we hear the major school lunch provider, La Belle, has
been placed into liquidation. The Belle has contracted to deliver
one hundred and twenty five thousand meals a day. This
responsibility will now fall on Compass, who are the only

(00:20):
other school lunch provider. They're also helping out La Belle
with their liquidation and their workers. It's a good only
Compass A Katol Intermediate Principal Phil Palfrey was on the
working committee to set up the lunch program and he
joins me, now, good morning to your film.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Good morning, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm good. How worried should we be about this liquidation?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, I don't know. For me, it just seems to
be a one aspect that just shows how bad the
whole thing was. It just shows that well. In fact,
we interviewed LaBelle about when the program first began, when

(01:00):
a doing a government brought it in, and we just
felt that they went up to the scratch, up to
scratch then and we appointed at that time we were
allowed to appoint our own provider, and we appointed a
local person who ended up doing it for us for
the for all the time until last year when they
were cut and they did a fantastic job, and when

(01:23):
you've heard from the Bell again, until this whole new
arrangement began, and you know, we didn't really know them
that well, it just didn't work. It hasn't worked.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I didn't going forward with what we have. It seems
to me that you think the Bell was the company
causing problem. So the question we now have we're talking
about lunches next week, is can Compass meet the demand
on its own.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't
really have great faith in it, and I just well,
my only wishes that would just go back to what
it was before. It apparently is a saving at one
hundred of dollars, but I don't know if that's We
don't know if that's going to work out to be
that saving in the first place. But I do know

(02:08):
that three dollars a meal is just ridiculous and it
hasn't worked, and I just would love to go back
to the old system, and I think our country should
afford it and could afford it.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
You were on the working committee that set up the
lunch program in the first place. So are you just
resistant to change?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh no, I'm not. I'm an older principle, but I'm
not resistant to change. I was assured that the program
would be very similar to what we have now, so
I was prepared to see how it panned out. But
right from the very start, I saw the quality of
the food and I saw the reaction from my students

(02:48):
and my kids. Are We're a load des sool low
equity school, a high equity school, and our kids need
the food. There's no doubt about that, but they just
I just haven't two of them don't like it actually,
And yeah, that's just a good program.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Phil, thank you so much for getting up early for us.
Phil is the Cotel Intermediate Principle up North and was
on the program that set up the lunches in the
first place back in the day.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
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