David Seymour: Associate Education Minister on the mouldy school lunches being served at a Christchurch school

David Seymour's shrugging off food poisoning concerns at a Christchurch school, saying its principal is often complaining about Government policies. 

Haeata Community Campus recalled all lunches yesterday after discovering some boxes contained rancid and "dead" looking food.  

Some children had already eaten their lunch. 

Minister-in-charge Seymour told Mike Hosking a previous batch has likely been re-served to students. 

He says they're keeping an open mind while looking into how meals from last week got in front of children this week. 

The School Lunch Collective, Ministry of Education and MPI are all investigating. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As part of Scrutiny Week, we find out what farma's
former boss, Sarah Fit quit in February, of course, where
they don't come Monday payout as it turns out, a
three hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars. Anyway, David Seymour's
the Minister of Farmaker and is with us on this David.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Morning, Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Broadly speaking the value of Scrutiny Week. This is the
sort of stuff we get. Is it worth it?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's an awful lot of time and Parliament. I briefly
set in as a substitute because normally they only have
you can't do it if you're a minister. But I
wanted to cover someone who was sick, and I watched
the behavior of the Chloe sawbricks of the world and
I thought, you know, I don't know if this is
really going to make people believe in democracy, but you know,

(00:41):
the Parliament agreed to do it for three years. So
here we are.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
VERYL was asking the questions over and as Fit in
the three fifty seven thousand VERAYL wasn't defending it, was she?
I mean, she wasn't defending Fitfit was a disaster wasn't she.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, I just want to be clear. I'm not saying
who it was. You know, I can't do that, but
I just make the point Farmac inheritited a person that
we didn't hire. They will hire a long time ago
under a contract that we didn't sign, adjudicated with employment
law that we are changing. So ioways say in life,

(01:16):
it's not what happens to you, it's what you do
with it. We've got a great person in that role.
We're really really pleased with them and the way Farmac's
turning around the contracting that's up to the board, but
i'd hope that's tighter. And then the employment law. All
the people that are jumping up and down in this
ought to support the act Party and the government's policy

(01:38):
of saying, look, if you're over two hundred thousand dollars,
then you can't take a personal grievance because if you're
playing with the big kids, you have a massive influence
on the effectiveness of the organization and you shouldn't be
able to tie the organization up in a PG. That's
the bane of many small businesses existence. It shouldn't be
applied to somebody who has so much influence over whether

(02:01):
everyone else can be productive.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
While I've got you, talk to me about that fuzzy food.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
How is it?

Speaker 1 (02:06):
To several questions, that was disgusting. I don't know how
it happened, but the food's disgusting. How did kids eat it?
You couldn't get them to eat normal food, but they
suddenly fuzzy, disgusting food. And is it really a problem
or do we have something at play here?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, here's a few facts. It appears that a meal
that had been from a previous week was reserved to
some children. Radio and New Zealand then reported they're all
being tested for food poisoning. Well that there is no
food poisoning. There is no sickness at all. And what's
interesting is that the principle at the center of this

(02:42):
is what you might call a frequent flyer in terms
of getting in the media to complain about a range
of government policies. So we're doing some testing and keeping
a very open mind about how meals from last week
got in front of children this week.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
How much trouble broader question are you and Erica facing?
This is the teterity thing that schools just don't like.
You are not going to do what they're just it's
a war basically.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, Erica and I are fine. We're very clear in
what we're trying to do, and that is make sure
that when a kid goes to school, there is a
teacher who's a knowledgeable adult standing in front of one classroom,
not three, joined together, with a knowledge rich curriculum of
facts that they are transferring from one generation to the next.
And then at the end we're going to test it

(03:32):
with proper exams so you can't fiddle your credits and
work around actual proper learning and testing. That's what we're
doing and that will uplift all children in the future
of this country. What I find interesting as we did
some analysis over the weekend and discovered that the schools
that have come out and made these declarations have an

(03:55):
average UWI pass rate for Maori students of twenty four percent,
which is hardly great. In the average across the country
that figure is thirty two percent. So I know that
people get into statistics and correlations, not causation. I get it,
But just on the face of it, the schools that
invest in all of this politics and virtue signaling don't

(04:18):
actually seem to do better for Mari's students when it
comes to getting university entrants. Now also just ask a
few questions. If you have a school that's doing this,
you could ask them did they actually consult their parent
community before sending out these messages? Number two? Did they
talk to anyone outside the school community such as those

(04:39):
that are pushing this campaign and it is a campaign?
And number three and you know this happens to be
an ac party policy. The major change that we made
to the duties of school boards was we said academic
achievement must be the paramount objective. They're not talking about
how they're going to address that and these emails going out.
And finally we also said, you know, you' no longer

(05:00):
have to give effeck to the treaty, but you do
have to reflect all of New Zealand's cultural diversity. They're
not saying how they want to do that, so it
would be useful if they could reflect and follow the
laws of Parliament and maybe focus a bit on academic achievement.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Good stuff. Appreciate it, David Seymour, it's a shame you've
got to say, well, that doesn't Minister of Fun. Where
it started off as Minister of Fine but ended up
associated Education Minister.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
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