Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on Chris Luxon stepping up to defend David Seymour's school lunch programme

The Prime Minister's yet again been forced to defend David Seymour over the school lunches saga in the House. 

The Opposition was relentless at Question Time today - with Chris Hipkins taking aim at the Government over the school lunch programme.

Yet again, it was up to Chris Luxon to fend off the the attacks. 

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper unpacks today's events. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry Soap is his senior political correspondent, Barry Good Afternoon
afternoon right now in the House, the school lunch singers
back with a vengeance.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Isn't it terrible? It just goes on and on and on.
I mean a Green MPEd by the name of Lawrence Sounan.
He even wrote to the Speaker's day and the House
proceedings started off with the Speakers saying, I have received
a letter from this doctor Lawrence Sunan, who apparently is
a list MP for the Greens, seeking a snap debate

(00:31):
on the so called explodeing school lunch. I think Jerry
was in his right mind and said, no, there won't
be a snap debate on it. When a lunch falls over,
it's not a case for Parliament to charge itself with that.
In New Zealand, I just had a look at how
many lunches we supply. We supply two hundred and thirty

(00:52):
thousand lunches a day. That company that went broke they
were more than one hundred thousand of those, so that's
quite significant. And I was looking around the world and
having a look at where our school lunch is being provided.
Most countries are supplying them to needy schools and needy areas.
If you think of India for example, and the Prime

(01:13):
Mierster could take a few tips from India on school
lunches when he goes there next week. They supply one
hundred and twenty five million school lunches a day. I
imagine that. But anyway, look Labour's Chris Hipkins. He was
banging on about how bad the school lunches are in
Parliament today, but I believe he scored something of an

(01:34):
own goal. How many times have we heard about that
exploding lunch and gisbon? I mean, what happened was the
kid carrying the lunch actually dropped it and splashed a
bit of the whatever the lunch was on his leg
and got burnt. Well, it's hardly an exploding lunch. The
media have called it. Many sections of the media have

(01:57):
called it the exploding lunch, and Hipkins himself today called
it that and the one lunch, the more than one
lunch is exploded. If you listen to Chris zipsism, why is.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
He willing to wait until term two for the chaos
David Seymour's cause to the school lunch program to be fixed,
given kids are going hungry lunches are still arriving late
or not at all, some of the food is inedible,
and in the worst cases, kids are being physically injured
by exploding lunches.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Well, the incident we saw last week was unacceptable and
not something we want to see at all. I think
the Minister has fronted really clearly on that actually suspending
those type of lunches.

Speaker 5 (02:36):
Through the Can the Prime Minister confirm that yesterday's on
time delivery for the Healthy School Lunch program was ninety
nine point seven four percent And is that better than
the delivery of the vaccine roll out which someone forgot
to order.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Ouch, And don't forget that Chris Sipkins was the COVID minute.
Of course he was at the time, so that was
a bit of a good comeback.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I guess there's the politics of it, and then there's
why did we give these guys the contract if they
were six weeks from going balley up so they knew
it's right.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
So I'm strange.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
David Seymour on the show after five on that. Now,
this investment summit kicking off this week in Auckland and
the Greens are waiting in.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, they were in Parliament today and if yesterday's polls
anything to go by, of course the Labor led government
will have the Greens at the Cabinet table have a
listen to their co leader Madam and Davidson quizzing the
Prime Minister in Parliament about the summit and how comfortable
are you with the sort of her sort of economic thinking.

Speaker 6 (03:40):
What exactly is his growth strategy to utilize and develop
our local wealth base here in altoa New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Has done a very very poor job over a number
of decades of attracting capital to New Zealand.

Speaker 6 (03:52):
Is it fair that the biggest early childhood education provider
that New Zealanders have to send their tamadiqi so they
can go to mahe pulled in thirty two million dollars
of tax free profits last year while most people are
struggling to get by.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
I mean, this is just characterized as the Greens position,
doesn't it It's ad growth agenda of living in a
hermit kingdom.

Speaker 6 (04:17):
Will the Prime Minister increase public ownership of the basic
things we all need just to live, like school lunches,
healthcare and childcare or will he choose to sell off
I'll tell I have.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
To say the Greens are totally deluded on economics. I mean,
I don't know how to say it any other way.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
It was Shane Jones yelling out Maxus Maxis in the background.
But look, it is interesting, isn't I heard your editorial.
And you know it's been traditionally so hard to raise
capital in this country because we simply don't have enough.
I mean, these people are trillionaires coming to the country.
Six trillion dollars is represented this investment summit, a lot

(05:02):
of money, and I've heard from some very senior people
involved in the investment community saying the problem with New
Zealand up until now is they haven't had projects to offer. Now,
hopefully over the next few days Thursday and Friday, we'll
see a number of projects on the table so that
these people can look at them and say, yeah, that

(05:25):
could be a good invent.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
And hopefully having Barbara Edmonds at the giving a speech
to there and showing her support make of them an
indication that yeah, it's good. It's good because you need consistency. Yeah, Barry,
thank you very much. No problem is always Barry Soper,
Senior political correspondent.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
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