Ain't This Position Familiar?

Well, all monkeys do what they see.

It's 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I'm falling...

Some of you might’ve seen the title of this newsletter and smiled. It’s from a track on the Counting Crows album August and Everything After. A favourite album of mine that helped me through some pretty dark days.

These feel like dark days too. Before we continue perhaps we ought to rewind the lyrics to the beginning, rather than starting with those above, which conveniently matched the morning.

Just down the street from your hotel, baby
I stay at home with my disease
And ain't this position familiar, darling
Well, all monkeys do what they see
Help me stay awake, I'm falling...

This position does seem familiar. We had a good government, one of the best and now we have the opposite. A government that looks out of touch, borderline corrupt, and disinterested in improving the lives of most. I wonder how many “monkeys” see what they’ve done?

“Pour aunty a rum and coke and bring me my Winfields hun”, suggested caption from Lynda.

Hmm, I should remember kindness and that possibly wasn’t it. My apologies to the monkeys.

Honestly if minor Apes were offered a bucket of GST free bananas, or a bucket of horse shit, I reckon they’d pick the former every time. Even if the second one had a nice bow and a label saying “eat me, I’m delicious and come with tax cuts”.

So here we are, with no bananas. Yes, we have no bananas.

Sadly healthy brain food like that may well soon be a thing of the past for hungry students. Because in choosing bucket ‘B’ we’ve ended up with possibly the worst option imaginable looking after the hungry kids in our schools...

In a move so grotesque it seems more bad joke than reality, the Minister with responsibility for free school lunches is none other than ACT leader David Seymour. A man who follows the Taxpayers’ Union’s mantra of there being no such thing as a free lunch - for the poor.

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion
Try to keep myself away from me

In an appointment that’s as hard to fathom as having a pro smoking Health Minister, the guy who campaigned against the lunches in schools programme, describing it as wasteful public spending, is now in charge. Yeah. That guy.

Image: D Watson.

The programme, introduced by Labour in 2019, provides lunches to about 220,000 students. Prime Minister Luxon has committed to funding it beyond this year, but the fact that Seymour has been appointed to look after it is concerning to both health campaigners and the opposition.

In the same way that someone hiring a mobster to “look after you”, might be a cause for alarm.

Former Education Minister, and Labour’s Education spokesperson, Jan Tinetti said:

“The free and healthy lunches in schools programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money. It is the exact kind of programme that should continue to be funded, especially during a cost of living crisis.

Teachers are consistently telling us how much this programme benefits learning and kids’ well being in the classroom. If David Seymour has any sense he will change his long-held position on the programme and commit to funding it.”

Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA) have requested a meeting with the Minister to discuss the programme. HCA co-chair, Professor Boyd Swinburn, saying the following in an interview with the Herald:

Professor Boyd Swinburn.

“We are concerned that we have a minister in charge who has made it clear he wants the programme shut down for ideological reasons without full consideration of the evidence. His appointment signals that the future of the programme is in question, which is extremely concerning because it would jeopardise the health and wellbeing of these kids.

Without this programme, thousands of children would simply not get their daily nutritional needs met, with serious implications for their learning and development.”

Seymour has said, “the evidence that is in place indicates that the free school lunch programme has not improved attendance or achievement in any measurable way.”

Seriously? We all know the one about the kid who only goes to school to eat their lunch, but I hadn’t realised that improving attendance was an objective of the policy. Silly me, I thought it was about putting food into the bellies of hungry kids. Not only so they can concentrate and learn - but because it’s the right bloody thing to do!

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I’m all for making evidence based decisions but this programme has only just been rolled out, over a period where the impact of Covid must seriously cloud any findings. But more to the point - we’re talking about feeding hungry kids.

You cannot tell me there’s evidence that feeding kids is “wasteful spending”.

Chris Hipkins and Carmel Sepuloni prepare to serve up school lunches at Waitara High School during the election campaign last August. Vanessa Laurie/Stuff.