March 3, 2025 • 8 mins
The Finance Minister has acknowledged the Government's new cut-price regime for school lunches has issues - but indicated parents can also step up and contribute.
A number of schools throughout the country have complained about late deliveries and sub-standard offerings under the new system.
Nicola Willis says she expects the contractors to improve their service, but she's also reminding mums and dads that they can do their part.
"There's nothing to stop them from putting a Vegemite sandwich and a banana in their children's school bag. Actually, that's why we have a welfare system in this country - so that every family raising children has a minimum level of income needed to deliver their needs. I think we do need to get away from the idea that the Government does everything."
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now though Nicola Willis is with us the Finance Minister,
Minister good eating, good evening, run good to have you
on the show as always. I noticed in the health
announcement today that the funding is going to be tied
to performance. For you know, there's going to be KPIs.
Can we expect to see more of this type of
funding in the budget that if you give money to
these departments, actually you'll have some expectations about how it's
(00:23):
going to be spent and what you expect from it.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Absolutely, So what we judge the health system by is
what do patient see as an improvement And of course
we want to ensure that GPS get the funding that
they need, but that needs to result in something that
you can actually appreciate. So are they seeing more patients,
is that you wait less time? Are they making sure
(00:48):
that immunizations are getting into the arms of our kids?
So we're having a clear direction of tying additional funding
to increased performance so that New Zealanders get a better.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deal, because I imagine they will say turn round and say, well,
thank you, that sounds nice. I'd love to get the
extra money, but in order to get that money, I
need to hit the targets first, and how do you
hit the targets until you've got the people or the
extra resources to do it.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well, what we're saying is, in addition to their annual
increases in funding that gps always get, we're also going
to put another two hundred and eighty five million of
this performance based funding in there. And that's for really
reasonable things to make sure New Zealanders can see their
GP faster. So it's incentives to offer enhanced access after
our keeping their books open to you, patients, achieving government
(01:37):
health targets, and doing some more minor planned care. So
I think that's utterly reasonable that, yes, we keep uplifting
your funding each year, but when we give you a
boost like this, New Zealanders get a boost as.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, so well we can expect see more of that
type of talk and performance incentives in the budget.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, because what we want to see is improved results
for people, not just more money pouring in. We had
years of more money pouring into every facet of New
Zealand life under the last government, and many keywis will
tell you things didn't really improve much in many areas,
whether it was educational achievement, whether it was actually roads
being built. So our focuses value for every dollar of
(02:20):
yours that we spend.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Great piece by Thomas Coglan in the Herald this morning.
Well they always are from Thomas, but big deficit rising debt.
You know, he's spoken to all the rating agencies, and
I just found a really interesting part was from S
and P who said that after you know, because we're
paying now, what are we servicing debt? Servicing costs of
what nine billion dollars, which is double what they were
(02:42):
pre COVID.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That's right, and that's a huge amount of money. That's
money triple what we invest in the police every year.
So the debt comes with a price.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And double defense. Right. So what So one of the
things that they've talked about is during COVID, a lot
of governments around the world came out with policies and
programs and actually, we're just having a hard time pulling
them back. We've created an expectation. Have we done that
with school lunches?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, look, I'm going to be candid with you on
school lunches, which is this. I accept the argument that
says I don't want kids not learning at school because
they're so hungry they can't concentrate. That was the initial
reason for a school lunch program, but I think we
should always line that up with parental responsibility. So when
(03:31):
I see teachers and principle saying this food isn't very tasty,
I do expect the contractors to be delivering high service.
But I also think if mums and dads are really unhappy,
there's nothing to stop them putting a veggiemite sandwich and
a banana in their children's school bag. And actually, that's
why we have a welfare system in this country, so
that every family raising children has a minimum level of
(03:54):
income needed to deliver for their needs. So I think
we do need to get away from the idea that
the government does everything. We have chosen to continue the
school lunch program in an efficient way, and we should
keep driving performance from those contracts. But none of that
means the end of parental responsibility.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
No, but aren't you by by doing that, by continuing
with the program, you are abdicating parental responsibility because the
state is inserting itself and saying we'll provide it. And
as soon as you do that, the end that you've
got kids saying, well, I had pit every day I mean,
for goodness sakes, I had lunch and sausage every day
when I was at school, and I said, you know,
you just ate it. I mean, you create an expectation
(04:34):
and once you've done that, it's very hard to undo,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, what we have done is reduced the amount of
expenditure on that program significantly, made it leaner and meaner.
We've done that on a time limited basis so that
we can evaluate it, see what effect it's having, and
then make decisions for the future.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So you could get you could cut it further in future.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That's not what I'm saying today. Kebine's made a decision
to the program as it is in a reduced form.
But as I say, I think that parental responsibility is
still very important. And before people complain that their kids
really don't like the lunch, let's remember mums and dads
can make lunch boxes for their kids, or you know,
get their kids to make their own lunch boxes.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
True, Hey, terms of trade numbers are today good. This
for December quarter up three point one percent. It's largely
on the back of our you know, our primary industries.
It's dairy, it's red meat, those things are going up
and so we do better.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, that's right, go the farmers. And I tell you
I've spent a bit of time in rural New Zealand recently,
and that money is starting to flow through into those communities.
Because when farmers are making more money, they tend to
spend it at their local shops, they tend to buy equipment,
do more repairs on farms. And that's great news for
all of us. And this is a continuing story where
(05:55):
the prices we're getting for our exports are rising faster
than and so actually our terms of trade is now
thirteen point six percent higher than in December. That's a
really good thing. It basically means that New Zealand is
doing a better job of paying our way in the world.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There's a story out this morning about these three thousand
low income families. The government has decided not to adjust
this very little non tax credit threshold, which effectively has
frozen their incomes. A lot of them are single parent
households for the year. Do you are you aware of
that or do you have a problem with that?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You haven't characterized it quite right, Ryan. What we did
at the budget was we made the generous decision to
pass on a twenty five dollars increase in the inwork
tax credit as part of our tax package to this
group of families. So that went well above the increase
that they would normally increase in a year. And so
what that means is that we're not then doing another
(06:52):
increase at this point in the year, as is historically
the case, and families are still much better off than
they were prior to the tax pack. This payment is
all about ensuring that families are always better off in
work than not working, and that they face good incentives
to take on extra hours of work. I'd fully acknowledge
there are still issues in the working for Family system
(07:14):
which mean that sometimes those incentives to keep working extra
hours aren't as good as they should be. And that's
something I've got under active review and I think we
can do better on in the future.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
All Right, it sounds like we might get something in
the budget. And what about ACC, because obviously Bailey's gone,
it's Scott Simpson noun charge seven point two billion dollar deficit.
Is the turnaround plan still on track? What's happening here?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Absolutely, there's two independent reviews underway. The first is on
ACC's operational performance. So that's basically saying if someone goes
on ACC, we want confidence that they are doing the
right things to get them back to work rehabilitated as
soon as possible. And their performance in that way has
really fallen off in recent years, and you and I
(07:59):
end up paying for it because that's why levees keep
increasing bar as much as they have, and we want
to see those levy increases moderate over time. So that
means ACC has to get better at buying the right
rehab getting people back to work sooner. And then the
second thing is we're also reviewing their investment strategy. They
manage nearly fifty billion dollars worth of investments, so we
(08:20):
need to make sure that they're managing them in the
best way possible.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
All right, did you see the Oscars result? And have
you seen anor the movie that won?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Ah? Look, Ron, the truth is I don't get out much,
so I haven't seen that one. I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Even if you did, goodluck affording the movies. Absolutely outrageous
what you pay to go see a film these days, minister,
Thanks very much you time. Nicolai nicola Willis, says the
Finance minister For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, Listen
live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
Right now though Nicola Willis is with us the Finance Minister,
Minister good eating, good evening, run good to have you
on the show as always. I noticed in the health
announcement today that the funding is going to be tied
to performance. For you know, there's going to be KPIs.
Can we expect to see more of this type of
funding in the budget that if you give money to
these departments, actually you'll have some expectations about how it's
(00:23):
going to be spent and what you expect from it.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Absolutely, So what we judge the health system by is
what do patient see as an improvement And of course
we want to ensure that GPS get the funding that
they need, but that needs to result in something that
you can actually appreciate. So are they seeing more patients,
is that you wait less time? Are they making sure
(00:48):
that immunizations are getting into the arms of our kids?
So we're having a clear direction of tying additional funding
to increased performance so that New Zealanders get a better.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deal, because I imagine they will say turn round and say, well,
thank you, that sounds nice. I'd love to get the
extra money, but in order to get that money, I
need to hit the targets first, and how do you
hit the targets until you've got the people or the
extra resources to do it.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well, what we're saying is, in addition to their annual
increases in funding that gps always get, we're also going
to put another two hundred and eighty five million of
this performance based funding in there. And that's for really
reasonable things to make sure New Zealanders can see their
GP faster. So it's incentives to offer enhanced access after
our keeping their books open to you, patients, achieving government
(01:37):
health targets, and doing some more minor planned care. So
I think that's utterly reasonable that, yes, we keep uplifting
your funding each year, but when we give you a
boost like this, New Zealanders get a boost as.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, so well we can expect see more of that
type of talk and performance incentives in the budget.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, because what we want to see is improved results
for people, not just more money pouring in. We had
years of more money pouring into every facet of New
Zealand life under the last government, and many keywis will
tell you things didn't really improve much in many areas,
whether it was educational achievement, whether it was actually roads
being built. So our focuses value for every dollar of
(02:20):
yours that we spend.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Great piece by Thomas Coglan in the Herald this morning.
Well they always are from Thomas, but big deficit rising debt.
You know, he's spoken to all the rating agencies, and
I just found a really interesting part was from S
and P who said that after you know, because we're
paying now, what are we servicing debt? Servicing costs of
what nine billion dollars, which is double what they were
(02:42):
pre COVID.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That's right, and that's a huge amount of money. That's
money triple what we invest in the police every year.
So the debt comes with a price.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And double defense. Right. So what So one of the
things that they've talked about is during COVID, a lot
of governments around the world came out with policies and
programs and actually, we're just having a hard time pulling
them back. We've created an expectation. Have we done that
with school lunches?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, look, I'm going to be candid with you on
school lunches, which is this. I accept the argument that
says I don't want kids not learning at school because
they're so hungry they can't concentrate. That was the initial
reason for a school lunch program, but I think we
should always line that up with parental responsibility. So when
(03:31):
I see teachers and principle saying this food isn't very tasty,
I do expect the contractors to be delivering high service.
But I also think if mums and dads are really unhappy,
there's nothing to stop them putting a veggiemite sandwich and
a banana in their children's school bag. And actually, that's
why we have a welfare system in this country, so
that every family raising children has a minimum level of
(03:54):
income needed to deliver for their needs. So I think
we do need to get away from the idea that
the government does everything. We have chosen to continue the
school lunch program in an efficient way, and we should
keep driving performance from those contracts. But none of that
means the end of parental responsibility.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
No, but aren't you by by doing that, by continuing
with the program, you are abdicating parental responsibility because the
state is inserting itself and saying we'll provide it. And
as soon as you do that, the end that you've
got kids saying, well, I had pit every day I mean,
for goodness sakes, I had lunch and sausage every day
when I was at school, and I said, you know,
you just ate it. I mean, you create an expectation
(04:34):
and once you've done that, it's very hard to undo,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, what we have done is reduced the amount of
expenditure on that program significantly, made it leaner and meaner.
We've done that on a time limited basis so that
we can evaluate it, see what effect it's having, and
then make decisions for the future.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So you could get you could cut it further in future.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That's not what I'm saying today. Kebine's made a decision
to the program as it is in a reduced form.
But as I say, I think that parental responsibility is
still very important. And before people complain that their kids
really don't like the lunch, let's remember mums and dads
can make lunch boxes for their kids, or you know,
get their kids to make their own lunch boxes.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
True, Hey, terms of trade numbers are today good. This
for December quarter up three point one percent. It's largely
on the back of our you know, our primary industries.
It's dairy, it's red meat, those things are going up
and so we do better.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, that's right, go the farmers. And I tell you
I've spent a bit of time in rural New Zealand recently,
and that money is starting to flow through into those communities.
Because when farmers are making more money, they tend to
spend it at their local shops, they tend to buy equipment,
do more repairs on farms. And that's great news for
all of us. And this is a continuing story where
(05:55):
the prices we're getting for our exports are rising faster
than and so actually our terms of trade is now
thirteen point six percent higher than in December. That's a
really good thing. It basically means that New Zealand is
doing a better job of paying our way in the world.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There's a story out this morning about these three thousand
low income families. The government has decided not to adjust
this very little non tax credit threshold, which effectively has
frozen their incomes. A lot of them are single parent
households for the year. Do you are you aware of
that or do you have a problem with that?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You haven't characterized it quite right, Ryan. What we did
at the budget was we made the generous decision to
pass on a twenty five dollars increase in the inwork
tax credit as part of our tax package to this
group of families. So that went well above the increase
that they would normally increase in a year. And so
what that means is that we're not then doing another
(06:52):
increase at this point in the year, as is historically
the case, and families are still much better off than
they were prior to the tax pack. This payment is
all about ensuring that families are always better off in
work than not working, and that they face good incentives
to take on extra hours of work. I'd fully acknowledge
there are still issues in the working for Family system
(07:14):
which mean that sometimes those incentives to keep working extra
hours aren't as good as they should be. And that's
something I've got under active review and I think we
can do better on in the future.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
All Right, it sounds like we might get something in
the budget. And what about ACC, because obviously Bailey's gone,
it's Scott Simpson noun charge seven point two billion dollar deficit.
Is the turnaround plan still on track? What's happening here?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Absolutely, there's two independent reviews underway. The first is on
ACC's operational performance. So that's basically saying if someone goes
on ACC, we want confidence that they are doing the
right things to get them back to work rehabilitated as
soon as possible. And their performance in that way has
really fallen off in recent years, and you and I
(07:59):
end up paying for it because that's why levees keep
increasing bar as much as they have, and we want
to see those levy increases moderate over time. So that
means ACC has to get better at buying the right
rehab getting people back to work sooner. And then the
second thing is we're also reviewing their investment strategy. They
manage nearly fifty billion dollars worth of investments, so we
(08:20):
need to make sure that they're managing them in the
best way possible.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
All right, did you see the Oscars result? And have
you seen anor the movie that won?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Ah? Look, Ron, the truth is I don't get out much,
so I haven't seen that one. I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Even if you did, goodluck affording the movies. Absolutely outrageous
what you pay to go see a film these days, minister,
Thanks very much you time. Nicolai nicola Willis, says the
Finance minister For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, Listen
live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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