March 11, 2025 • 9 mins
Tonight on The Huddle, Auckland Councillor Maurice Williamson and former Labour Chief of Staff Mike Munro joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!
Is the school lunch programme doomed? Libelle Group, one of the lunch providers, has been tipped into liquidation. What does this saga mean for the Government?
The Commerce Commission is taking legal action against HelloFresh - should it be easier to walk away from paid subscriptions?
Should online gambling providers have to put some of their profits towards local community groups?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the huddle of tonight Mike Munroe, former chief of
staff to just Sinda, Mike, good evening to.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You, good Ryan, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Good, thank you? And Marris Williamson's here Auckland councilor former
National Party minister of course.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Marris good evening, good evening.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The school lunch program, Mike, I'll be interested to hear
your take on this, like politically is it is it
death by a thousand cuts or are there enough New
Zealanders who think this program is a raught anyway? And
not every kid needs the lunch, the free lunch that
they're getting.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
No, I don't agree with what your letter comment. Look,
this is this is turning into a shambles and a
real political time time bomb, I should say for lux
And I mean today we had another day, another disaster
with this company sort of going into liquidation. You've got
to remember that this is one of those sort of
Middle New Zealand issues and it's threatening, threatening right now
(00:51):
to engulf Luxon and his government. You've got struggling families
from all over the country who rely on this program.
Now they send their kids off to school without lunchbox
out because their belief is that the school's going to
provide a lunch and not happening as regularly and as
reliably as it should be. So Luxin's got to get
his two minutesters together. The three educations has bang their
(01:15):
heads together and tell them to get the sorted before
it starts to sort of cause him a lot more
trouble than it already has.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Morris, do you agree with that? Do you think it's
it's permeating his popularity and what's left of it.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
I think it's an absolute total disaster. But what I
don't get, I really just don't understand it. I grew
up in a rural community with a lot of poor
people and so on. Everybody got lunches in some way,
with some form somehow, and the parents did it. They
went without for other things. And kids are at school
for about half of the number of days in a year.
So what do they eat with us six weeks of
(01:49):
school holidays over to January? What do they eat during
those days? My view is this has just become such
a political football that people have got to be fed
by the government or they won't get fed at all.
That didn't happened right through the depression, didn't happen right
through the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties. So why is
it now we've made this dependent generation that if you
(02:09):
don't get the meal provided by the government, then you
won't get a meal at all.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, and also if you don't eat the meal, then
you can't be hungry.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Mike, Now, well that's right. In fact, I can remember,
you know, the experiences was my own children game to
school and lunch is coming home untouched, and you still
wonder how they get through the day energy wise. But
the fact is, you know, kids do need to eat,
and most kids will eat. And there's a lot of
people out there right now struggling with all sorts of
(02:38):
cost of living issues, who who are finally hard to
provide a reliable lunch service themselves for their kids. You
know that the state has stepped in to provide the service,
and the states steps in to do it, they should
at least do it properly.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
All right, I.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Agree with the second part. I think of state does
step under do it. I just think there are other
ways of If people are desperately short of money, then
there should be a welfare of benefit payment or something.
But there are a hell of And I don't like
saying this, but I'll tell you right now. The whole
lot of parents who won't get off their ass and
butter some bread and stick something nutritional in a little
plastic pack and send the kid off. So well, someone
(03:17):
else is going to do it for me. And I'm sorry.
I just think that we've become so reliant on the
bloody State for so many things.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
On getting sick of.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It, Maurics Williamson and Mike Munro here on the Huddle tonight.
Mike Munroe and Marris Williamson on the Huddle tonight. Now,
the Commerce Commission is taking Hello Fresh to court this
overclaims that it basically roped in people who had stopped
their subscriptions to Hello Fresh and they do food and
all sorts of groceries stop them. They then called them
(03:44):
out of the blue and said, oh, here's a deal
for you, And people didn't realize that taking that deal
meant that it would reactivate their subscription and they're locked
into the CycL again. You know, it's just hard to
shake it free. Mike, have you had any problems getting
out of a subscribe that you've signed up to?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yes? I have.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Otherwise I've you know, often taken a long time to
complete the process to get out of it, and it shouldn't.
It shouldn't take a long time. It should be simple.
There should be young one or two buttons to press
and then then push submits. Look, I'm just pleased to
see the Commerce Commission taking some action here. They've been
doing a lot of tut tutting and sticking statements on
(04:23):
their website. Well that's not good enough. It's about time
they took someone to court. And so look, I say,
all power to their arm in this case with Hello Fresh.
It's just it's the sneakiness of it that the tactics
they use to keep people engaged or as you say,
you know, the example you used to get people signed
up again when they've got no idea they're signing up.
(04:44):
Where New Zealand's been dragging the chain on this for
a long time, other countries have taken steps to tidy
it up, and it's about time we did as well.
And maybe this Commerce Commission actually against Hello Fresh will
sort of you know, be the start of good things
to come in that regard.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, it annoys the hell out of me, this stuff, Corus.
It really gets the belly is the fire in my
belly going?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
How about you?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I tell you what I've had an idea for develop
the best app going. If someone wants to be in
the app development community to go out that you run
it in the background. It monitors all of your subscriptions.
It alerts you if you haven't been using one for
two to three months. Because I found a suit. I
had an Amazon Prime. I turned up, my wife had
an Amazon Prime, and my son had an Amazon Prime,
paying so much for months to have it. We could
(05:27):
have done it all in the one account. An app
that monitored your things said, look, you haven't used his
account for three months? Do you want it to go?
It sent all of the necessaries and closed it off.
I reckon that app would be just the most valuable
thing you could have on your device right now.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Popular, Yeah, it would be certainly would be. I mean
you should be able to do it in one click.
That's what the what the consumer said says, And I think,
but you.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Don't even remember you've got you know, there are all
these movie services. And we signed up to tennis because
tennis has got a fantastic website. You watched a few
games and then you leave it, and then a while
later you find your bank statement.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Bloody hell, have I been paying that for the rest
of this year?
Speaker 4 (06:02):
I didn't you just you know something that told you
you had that, or you stupidly enough agreed to a trial.
You trial something, and of course the trial immediately clicks
into full time if you didn't do anything about it.
It's not so much the sneaky stuff. I'm okay with
killing that off. I would just love to know everything
that's going on that I'm not using and that I'm
still paying for.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Mike, We've got Brock van Velden on the show after
six tonight. Should online gambling providers have to put some
of their profits towards the local community and local community groups?
Because Brook van Velden says no.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, Well, I'm really stunned by this one. I can't
I can't work out why they why they wouldn't. I
mean all all the sort of local pokes and companies
that operate machines and pubs, et cetera, that are required
to distribute about forty percent. I think it is of
their revenue, and I can't see why it wouldn't also
apply to online gathering gambling, I should say, because you know,
(06:59):
rather than give them money to to communities, to sports clubs,
kids forty clubs, surf life savers or whatever. You know,
all this coins going off to oversea shareholders. So I
just don't know why you wouldn't bring it into line
with gambling elsewhere Morris.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
She's got a reasonably good point, though. She's sort of
worried that you start creating enormous dependency for various sort
of community groups on gambling revenue. And I would have thought,
I mean, we are just being bombarded with gambling ads now.
The tav Nightly is just probably the biggest advertiser on TV,
and I would have thought, that's just nothing but a
(07:37):
drain on society and a drain on the economy, and
a drain on poor people who can't even pay for
the kids lunches.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
So I don't get this gambling stuff. I get it
at all.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I get there's good public health reasons for it.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, but the thing is, it's not that they're stopping it, Morris.
So if it's going to happen, then surely you would
prefer that the profits of it go towards something decent.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
At least you know, well, okay, I'm in two much
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I actually think you're going to create dependency on social
groups if you are taking the taxes offered from people
who are gambling and giving them money as handouts, because
then one day if that particular gambling operation falls over
and goes belly up, there'll be a yelling and screaming, well,
what are we going to do? We've lost all our
source of income.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, okay, fair enough. Heyes, your app idea is taking
off with the listeners, Morris, someone says, what is the
app that Morris mentioned?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Writing it as we speak?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
But then actually someone else, John has text and to say, Morris,
there's already an app that does this. It's called rocket
money or go to rocketmoney dot com. Apparently that's either
a very good scam and we're about to all get scammed,
or it's a app. Thank you very much for coming on, guys.
Great to have you both. Mike Monroe, former chief of
(08:51):
staff to j Cinda a Journ and Morris Williamson Auckland counselor.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
For more from Heather Duplicy Ellen Drive listen live to
news talks it'd be from four weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio,
On the huddle of tonight Mike Munroe, former chief of
staff to just Sinda, Mike, good evening to.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You, good Ryan, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Good, thank you? And Marris Williamson's here Auckland councilor former
National Party minister of course.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Marris good evening, good evening.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The school lunch program, Mike, I'll be interested to hear
your take on this, like politically is it is it
death by a thousand cuts or are there enough New
Zealanders who think this program is a raught anyway? And
not every kid needs the lunch, the free lunch that
they're getting.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
No, I don't agree with what your letter comment. Look,
this is this is turning into a shambles and a
real political time time bomb, I should say for lux
And I mean today we had another day, another disaster
with this company sort of going into liquidation. You've got
to remember that this is one of those sort of
Middle New Zealand issues and it's threatening, threatening right now
(00:51):
to engulf Luxon and his government. You've got struggling families
from all over the country who rely on this program.
Now they send their kids off to school without lunchbox
out because their belief is that the school's going to
provide a lunch and not happening as regularly and as
reliably as it should be. So Luxin's got to get
his two minutesters together. The three educations has bang their
(01:15):
heads together and tell them to get the sorted before
it starts to sort of cause him a lot more
trouble than it already has.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Morris, do you agree with that? Do you think it's
it's permeating his popularity and what's left of it.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
I think it's an absolute total disaster. But what I
don't get, I really just don't understand it. I grew
up in a rural community with a lot of poor
people and so on. Everybody got lunches in some way,
with some form somehow, and the parents did it. They
went without for other things. And kids are at school
for about half of the number of days in a year.
So what do they eat with us six weeks of
(01:49):
school holidays over to January? What do they eat during
those days? My view is this has just become such
a political football that people have got to be fed
by the government or they won't get fed at all.
That didn't happened right through the depression, didn't happen right
through the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties. So why is
it now we've made this dependent generation that if you
(02:09):
don't get the meal provided by the government, then you
won't get a meal at all.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, and also if you don't eat the meal, then
you can't be hungry.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Mike, Now, well that's right. In fact, I can remember,
you know, the experiences was my own children game to
school and lunch is coming home untouched, and you still
wonder how they get through the day energy wise. But
the fact is, you know, kids do need to eat,
and most kids will eat. And there's a lot of
people out there right now struggling with all sorts of
(02:38):
cost of living issues, who who are finally hard to
provide a reliable lunch service themselves for their kids. You
know that the state has stepped in to provide the service,
and the states steps in to do it, they should
at least do it properly.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
All right, I.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Agree with the second part. I think of state does
step under do it. I just think there are other
ways of If people are desperately short of money, then
there should be a welfare of benefit payment or something.
But there are a hell of And I don't like
saying this, but I'll tell you right now. The whole
lot of parents who won't get off their ass and
butter some bread and stick something nutritional in a little
plastic pack and send the kid off. So well, someone
(03:17):
else is going to do it for me. And I'm sorry.
I just think that we've become so reliant on the
bloody State for so many things.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
On getting sick of.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It, Maurics Williamson and Mike Munro here on the Huddle tonight.
Mike Munroe and Marris Williamson on the Huddle tonight. Now,
the Commerce Commission is taking Hello Fresh to court this
overclaims that it basically roped in people who had stopped
their subscriptions to Hello Fresh and they do food and
all sorts of groceries stop them. They then called them
(03:44):
out of the blue and said, oh, here's a deal
for you, And people didn't realize that taking that deal
meant that it would reactivate their subscription and they're locked
into the CycL again. You know, it's just hard to
shake it free. Mike, have you had any problems getting
out of a subscribe that you've signed up to?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yes? I have.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Otherwise I've you know, often taken a long time to
complete the process to get out of it, and it shouldn't.
It shouldn't take a long time. It should be simple.
There should be young one or two buttons to press
and then then push submits. Look, I'm just pleased to
see the Commerce Commission taking some action here. They've been
doing a lot of tut tutting and sticking statements on
(04:23):
their website. Well that's not good enough. It's about time
they took someone to court. And so look, I say,
all power to their arm in this case with Hello Fresh.
It's just it's the sneakiness of it that the tactics
they use to keep people engaged or as you say,
you know, the example you used to get people signed
up again when they've got no idea they're signing up.
(04:44):
Where New Zealand's been dragging the chain on this for
a long time, other countries have taken steps to tidy
it up, and it's about time we did as well.
And maybe this Commerce Commission actually against Hello Fresh will
sort of you know, be the start of good things
to come in that regard.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, it annoys the hell out of me, this stuff, Corus.
It really gets the belly is the fire in my
belly going?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
How about you?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I tell you what I've had an idea for develop
the best app going. If someone wants to be in
the app development community to go out that you run
it in the background. It monitors all of your subscriptions.
It alerts you if you haven't been using one for
two to three months. Because I found a suit. I
had an Amazon Prime. I turned up, my wife had
an Amazon Prime, and my son had an Amazon Prime,
paying so much for months to have it. We could
(05:27):
have done it all in the one account. An app
that monitored your things said, look, you haven't used his
account for three months? Do you want it to go?
It sent all of the necessaries and closed it off.
I reckon that app would be just the most valuable
thing you could have on your device right now.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Popular, Yeah, it would be certainly would be. I mean
you should be able to do it in one click.
That's what the what the consumer said says, And I think,
but you.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Don't even remember you've got you know, there are all
these movie services. And we signed up to tennis because
tennis has got a fantastic website. You watched a few
games and then you leave it, and then a while
later you find your bank statement.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Bloody hell, have I been paying that for the rest
of this year?
Speaker 4 (06:02):
I didn't you just you know something that told you
you had that, or you stupidly enough agreed to a trial.
You trial something, and of course the trial immediately clicks
into full time if you didn't do anything about it.
It's not so much the sneaky stuff. I'm okay with
killing that off. I would just love to know everything
that's going on that I'm not using and that I'm
still paying for.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Mike, We've got Brock van Velden on the show after
six tonight. Should online gambling providers have to put some
of their profits towards the local community and local community groups?
Because Brook van Velden says no.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, Well, I'm really stunned by this one. I can't
I can't work out why they why they wouldn't. I
mean all all the sort of local pokes and companies
that operate machines and pubs, et cetera, that are required
to distribute about forty percent. I think it is of
their revenue, and I can't see why it wouldn't also
apply to online gathering gambling, I should say, because you know,
(06:59):
rather than give them money to to communities, to sports clubs,
kids forty clubs, surf life savers or whatever. You know,
all this coins going off to oversea shareholders. So I
just don't know why you wouldn't bring it into line
with gambling elsewhere Morris.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
She's got a reasonably good point, though. She's sort of
worried that you start creating enormous dependency for various sort
of community groups on gambling revenue. And I would have thought,
I mean, we are just being bombarded with gambling ads now.
The tav Nightly is just probably the biggest advertiser on TV,
and I would have thought, that's just nothing but a
(07:37):
drain on society and a drain on the economy, and
a drain on poor people who can't even pay for
the kids lunches.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
So I don't get this gambling stuff. I get it
at all.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I get there's good public health reasons for it.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, but the thing is, it's not that they're stopping it, Morris.
So if it's going to happen, then surely you would
prefer that the profits of it go towards something decent.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
At least you know, well, okay, I'm in two much
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I actually think you're going to create dependency on social
groups if you are taking the taxes offered from people
who are gambling and giving them money as handouts, because
then one day if that particular gambling operation falls over
and goes belly up, there'll be a yelling and screaming, well,
what are we going to do? We've lost all our
source of income.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, okay, fair enough. Heyes, your app idea is taking
off with the listeners, Morris, someone says, what is the
app that Morris mentioned?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Writing it as we speak?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
But then actually someone else, John has text and to say, Morris,
there's already an app that does this. It's called rocket
money or go to rocketmoney dot com. Apparently that's either
a very good scam and we're about to all get scammed,
or it's a app. Thank you very much for coming on, guys.
Great to have you both. Mike Monroe, former chief of
(08:51):
staff to j Cinda a Journ and Morris Williamson Auckland counselor.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
For more from Heather Duplicy Ellen Drive listen live to
news talks it'd be from four weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio,
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