David Seymour: Associate Education Minister on the school lunch budget and opportunities for businesses

School lunches look to open up a number of opportunities for businesses. 

The Government says it's saving $130 million a year by reducing the cost per meal from $8 to $3. 

The Compass Group has been contracted as the lead supplier. 

Associate Education Minister David Seymour told Mike Hosking other businesses will be able to get involved. 

He says that for example, the programme will need 18 tonnes of chicken a fortnight, so there will be opportunities in that. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Windes can pack up and say sorry, because it
looks like you can provide school lunches at a much
cheaper price and with less waste, and they look more
than good enough to eat to meat katsu, chicken, buttered chicken, pasta,
salads at three dollars ahead intead of the previous government's
eight dollars sixty eight. There are still the moners, though,
if you listen to Morning Report, more for you. But
this is the sort of whining that's been going on

(00:21):
this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'd like to see the modeling because I'm not convinced
that you can do it for three dollars. I need
to see the modeling of how that's seemed possible, particularly
when there's so many dietary requirements.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
David Seymour's with us a very good morning to you.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
So even though you display the lunches for all to
see yesterday and eat them, they still want to see
the modeling.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, the funny thing is I'm a recovering electrical engineer,
so I actually do know quite a bit about mathematical modeling.
And what I've never seen in politics is anyone that
talked about bodeling that don't understands is usually a sort
of a prop that the intellectually feeble rolled out when
they don't know what else to say. I must make

(01:07):
the point. That's why I don't go on morning and
report and haven't done for the last five years. The
truth I've found the cure to cancer. That's sort of
a wave. They've done it for the wrong reason, so
we'll fall them. Isn't a great thing on the microssing request.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yes, it is. Having said that, one of the other
complaints and what was the other complaint. The other complaint
is the company or one of the companies you've hired,
have some sort of auditing process internationally and they've been
found wanting true or not.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, that is true. I mean you've got big contractors
providing large amounts for meals, and the risk is always
that once you're in the door, the quality of the
contract and declines. But when this is not new, we
know that and what we've done has been a lot
to the challenges that other government departments such as Defense,

(01:52):
for example, have had with the same contractors. Said think
you can make it work as you can, and we're
basically built into our contract really strict monitoring so that
we can ensure the quality stays up. So yeah, I mean,
but this is not new right, Like many of the
contractors that were previously in place, people were dissatisfied, and
you sign a contract, you have to manage it.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Have you been surprised? I know this is a slightly
softball question, but have you been to I'm getting really
depressed at the number. I mean, you've solved the problem.
You've irrefutably solved the problem at three dollars. I saw
what you've served up. I see it, I get it.
It's edible. You fix the problem. Yet people still don't
want to see that it's fixed, indicating that there are

(02:35):
people who literally will not accept that you're right and
you delivered, and there's something wrong with us, isn't there.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Well, let me put it out of the way. I
think what has been done is actually quite amazing. But
it's not really me that's done, and I just let
a group of people get on with it. And if
you look at these businesses, if you look at the
Volume Expert Advisory Group, people like Steth Theramunger who led it,

(03:04):
people like the Heart Foundation who volunteered people that just
came off from business in one case. You know, we're
getting pretty big pay cuts. I suspect for the government
daily rate is a bit less than they normally expect,
but they did it for New Zealand. Those people actually
really pulled together something really different. The Ministry of Education

(03:24):
yesterday said, you know, we were not used to operating
like this. It's been a real eye opener for us.
So all I've done is bring together a group of people, business,
voluntary sector, government and say here's a big target three
dollars can we do it? And actually, given those conditions,
they've underway and we're basically if we've done this as

(03:46):
a government five years ago, if labor had adopted this model,
the total savings to date would be eight hundred and
sixty million dollars. Instead, we have eight hundred and sixty
million more debt that you know, ironically that the children
get the lunches will have to pay more than anyone.
So look, I can see why some people might be
indignantal but you know, we've done something quite different here.

(04:09):
We've done something I always looked in COVID. I thought,
why can't the government work with business more? So that's
all we've done, and maybe people come around to believe
it someday.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Is that a whole of government model you can sort
of splash about the place.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Now, Well, I certainly think there's other areas where you
just ask yourself, white the slate clean. We're not doing
it the old way at all. And if we had
to solve this really clearly defined problem, how would we
do it? And yeah, I'm thinking about a few other
ways we might be able to do it, such as
around school attendance.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, what about the opportunity for businesses who can see
a very very large program and they make something that
is in the lunch, whether it be the rise, the
chicken or the whatever that can feed into that. Surely
there's an opportunity there.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Well, there's massive opportunities. We had almost twenty companies at
the launched yesterday. You take chickens for example, they're taking
eighteen tons of chicken every two weeks for this program.
So I'd say, good news for text and play us,
great news for kids, but disaster. If you're a picking

(05:16):
good just.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Talk to you, appreciate it. David Seymour, Associate Minister of Education.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
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