The stupidity of free school lunches in every decile 1 to 4 school
The Green policy to provide free (ie taxpayer funded) school lunches to all decile 1 to 4 primary schools is a woefully bad use of taxpayer money – even if one accepted that it is the state’s role to provide two out of three meals a day to school kids.
The Greens own policy says only 9% of pupils at decile 1 to 4 schools go to school hungry. Their policy costings are based on only 9% of pupils in those schools wanting free lunches.
Are you kidding?
You think that if lunches are available for free, only 9% of families in those schools will ask for them? What world do they live in?
Their projected costs will double, treble and quadruple at least.
Taxpayers already fund school lunches for low income families. It is called Working for Families. Over $2.5 billion a year is given to families to cover the costs of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and more.
The cost of breakfast is about 40c a day for cereal. Lunch is around 60c to 80c for a couple of sandwiches.
But again, why stop at having the state just provide two meals a day to families. Just as kids can’t be expected to do well at school if they miss breakfast or lunch, how can you expect kids to do homework at night, if they possibly are missing dinner? Surely the Government must step in and start providing dinners also, in the name of solving inequality?
I also love (not) how the Greens sneer at the current food in schools programme that is mainly provided by Sanitarium and Fonterra as “corporate welfare“. Ummn, it is not corporate welfare, that is when corporates get welfare from the taxpayer. What Sanitarium and Fonterra do is called charitable giving. Sure they do it for brand reasons, but how depressing that a political party sees charitable giving as a bad thing. They think it is better to force taxpayers to fund the direct provision of two meals a day to families.