9. Lets Talk About - Feeding Division How School Lunches Became Political Tools

School lunches should be simple — feed the kids, support families, and make sure no child goes hungry. But in New Zealand, even something as basic as lunch has been turned into a political weapon.

In this episode, I break down the story of Ka Ora, Ka Ako, and how this Government is deliberately running the programme into the ground — not to save money, but to feed a narrative that blames struggling families instead of fixing the system.

This isn’t just about food — it’s about how politics works when no one’s watching.

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Transcript

Feeding Division: How School Lunches Became Political Tools

Kia ora, hello, and welcome to Piecing Together Unity. I’m Nigel McFall, founder of the Unity Party, and thanks for joining me today.

We’re talking about something that should be really simple—school lunches. But right now in New Zealand, even something as basic as making sure kids get fed at school has been turned into a political weapon.

This is the story of Ka Ora, Ka Ako—the healthy school lunch programme—and how it's being used to divide us instead of support us.

Now, I know some people will say I’m reading too much into this—seeing patterns where there aren’t any. But I want you to really listen today, because the dots we’re going to connect aren’t hidden. They’re right there, in plain sight. If you follow the trail, it paints a clear picture of a government that doesn’t just cut support for the most vulnerable—it actively turns those cuts into a tool to divide the rest of us.

That’s not a conspiracy theory—that’s recognising the game for what it is. Because this isn’t just about food. It’s about how politics works when no one’s watching.

Why Do We Even Need Free Lunches?

The argument you hear all the time is, “Parents should be feeding their own kids.” And in an ideal world, of course, they would. But the reality for so many families in New Zealand isn’t that simple.

Right now, people are working harder than ever, but no matter how many hours they put in, they’re still struggling to cover the basics. Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, rent keeps climbing, groceries are more expensive every week, and power bills are brutal.

And I’m not just talking about a small group of people. This isn’t a handful of unemployed households living off benefits. These are working families, solo parents, people with disabilities trying to stretch support that’s never enough, grandparents raising grandkids, people working two jobs just to stand still.

These are the people who keep this country running—the ones out on the early shifts stacking supermarket shelves before dawn, the security guards on the night shifts, the cleaners, the carers, the farmhands, the hospitality staff. They’re the ones whose jobs don’t come with cushy salaries, coffee meetings, or work-from-home options. Their jobs come with sore backs, tired feet, and somehow, still not enough to get by.

And here’s the kicker—they are doing everything right. They’re working hard, they’re budgeting, they’re doing their best for their kids. And yet, they’re still being blamed for needing help.

No one wants to rely on a free lunch programme. But when the system has backed you into a corner and you’re choosing between keeping the power on or filling a lunchbox, you take the help. Not because you want to, but because you have to.

What Life Actually Feels Like for These Families

I want you to imagine you’ve just worked a twelve-hour shift. You’re exhausted. You get home, try to spend a few minutes with your kids before they go to bed, maybe help with homework if you’ve got the energy left. Then you’re up again at five in the morning to do it all over again.

Where, in all of that, are you supposed to find the time or the energy to carefully plan and pack a nutritious school lunch? You’re not standing there flicking through some fancy lifestyle magazine for ideas or thinking about whether you’ve got the right mix of colours and food groups in the lunchbox. You’re standing in front of an almost-empty pantry, trying to figure out how to stretch the last of the bread, maybe finding a tin of something at the back, and hoping it’s enough to get through the day.

And you’re not alone. This is the daily reality for so many families. They’re not bad parents, they’re not irresponsible, they’re just exhausted and out of options.

Why Ka Ora, Ka Ako Exists

This is exactly why Ka Ora, Ka Ako was introduced. Not as a luxury, not as an extra, but as a lifeline—a way to take just one pressure off families who are already stretched to breaking point.

At Unity, our long-term goal is to fix the root problems. We want to fix housing, food prices, power costs, wages—so that families don’t need government lunches at all. But until we get those foundations right, programmes like this are essential.

So Why Did ACT Keep It?

Here’s where things start to get interesting.

ACT hated this programme when Labour introduced it. They called it wasteful, said it was a handout, argued that parents should be responsible for feeding their own kids. But now? David Seymour—the guy who wanted to scrap it—is running it.

Why? Because completely cutting it would have caused massive public backlash. Many of the schools that rely on these lunches are in rural and lower-income areas—places where struggling families are part of the fabric of those communities. Scrapping it outright would have meant openly admitting they were pulling food from the mouths of children.

And that’s the part that makes this so cynical—because if you look at David Seymour’s track record, it’s clear that supporting vulnerable communities has never been his priority.

This is the same David Seymour who led the charge to scrap the Māori Health Authority, calling it race-based division, despite the glaring health inequalities Māori communities face.

The same David Seymour who’s consistently pushed policies that cut disability funding, reducing already stretched support for people living with long-term health conditions and disabilities.

The same David Seymour who’s built his career stoking resentment towards any programme that recognises the structural disadvantages certain communities face—whether it’s Māori, Pasifika, low-income families, or people with disabilities.

So why is this man suddenly in charge of feeding vulnerable kids? Why would a politician who has shown nothing but contempt for targeted support now be running a targeted support programme?

It doesn’t add up—unless you realise the point was never to make the programme work. It was to run it into the ground.

So instead of killing it outright, they’re starving it.

The Slow Kill Strategy

Here’s how it works.

First, they quietly cut the funding. That forces food suppliers to cut corners—cheaper ingredients, smaller portions, fewer options. Meals go from decent and nutritious to bland, cold, and barely enough.

Then, when parents and schools start complaining—as they absolutely should—that’s when the real trap is sprung.

It’s not just parents speaking up. It’s teachers, principals, community support workers, and advocates—the people who see firsthand how important these lunches are. These are people who have the energy and the platform to push back, because they’re not just surviving shift to shift like many parents are. And when they do speak up, they’re not just speaking for themselves—they’re speaking for every family who can’t be at those meetings or write those emails because they’re too busy just getting through the day.

This is where the divide-and-conquer trick kicks in.

Because now, ACT and National can turn around and say, “Look at these ungrateful people, complaining about free food.” They feed that message straight to their voter base—people who might not know the reality of low-income life, but who are being encouraged to see families needing help as the enemy. It’s resentment politics at its worst—turning everyday New Zealanders against each other, instead of questioning why so many families need help in the first place.

They turn New Zealanders against struggling families, while quietly dismantling the support that was actually helping them. It’s classic divide-and-conquer politics—and it’s happening right in front of us.

The Marmite Sandwich Comment

Then Christopher Luxon steps up and says, “If you don’t like the lunches, just make a marmite sandwich and throw an apple in a bag.”

Now, at first, that might sound like good old-fashioned, no-nonsense Kiwi advice. So we ran the numbers on that simple lunch.

Two sandwiches, a bit of margarine, a smear of marmite, and an apple—it works out to just over a dollar per kid. Even if you add in a bag to put it in and a bit for delivery, you’re still well under two dollars.

Compare that to the $4.50 per lunch the government was paying under Ka Ora, Ka Ako.

So if cost-cutting was really the goal, they could have built the whole programme around something that basic—and saved millions right from the start.

But saving money was never the point.

The point was to create division—to make struggling families look like they’re asking for something fancy and extravagant, when all they ever wanted was something decent and reliable for their kids.

This is what frustrates me most—they pretend the problem is the families, when the problem has always been the system.

What A Better System Could Look Like

If the Government actually wanted to save money — and improve the quality of school lunches at the same time — they could have. The solutions were right there.

They could have trusted the people who know these kids best — the principals, the teachers, the parents, the local community — and worked with them to make it smarter and cheaper, without sacrificing quality.

Those communities would have stepped up. Schools could have ordered directly from local suppliers — the fruit shop down the road, the bakery in town, the local vege grower — people who actually care because they’re feeding their own community’s kids.

They could have scrapped expensive, unnecessary delivery contracts. Most schools already have vans. Parent volunteers would have jumped in. Local groups would have lent a hand. Instead of wasting money on middlemen, the focus could have been on getting better food into kids’ hands faster.

Some schools might have chosen to cook on-site. Others could have teamed up with local cafes. And here’s the part that really excites me — some could have turned it into a hands-on learning opportunity, starting each morning with students making their own lunches.

Imagine that. Kids working together to prepare food. Learning basic cooking skills. Understanding what goes into a healthy meal. Taking pride in what they’re eating — because they made it themselves.

It wouldn’t just be a lunch programme. It would be a life skills programme, teaching independence, teamwork, and even respect for food itself.

There were endless smart, practical ways to make this work — ways that would have saved money, built community, and improved quality all at once. But none of that was ever considered.

And let’s be honest about why: because this Government never wanted the programme to succeed in the first place. That’s the real story here. They didn’t want creative solutions. They didn’t want to see communities step up and prove they could take care of their own — because that doesn’t fit the story they’re trying to sell.

That story — the one they rely on — is the idea that these families and communities are helpless. That they’re lazy or ungrateful. That they need the Government to step in because they can’t be trusted to help themselves.

If the public saw schools, families, and local businesses all stepping up, solving problems together, and actually making the programme work — that would shatter the whole narrative this Government leans on. They couldn’t have that.

So instead of sitting down with schools and communities to find smarter ways to do this, they made their decisions behind closed doors in Wellington, cut deals with big catering companies who bid too low to deliver well, and walked away.

And the result? Schools getting lunches late — or not at all. Food arriving that’s so poor in quality that the kids don’t even want to eat it. And what’s the point of a free lunch if it ends up in the bin?

This could have been so much more than just feeding kids. It could have been about building pride, life skills, and community connection. It could have been something schools, families, and students all owned together — instead of something dumped on their doorstep by a Government too disconnected to care.

This is what leadership could have looked like — backing communities, trusting local solutions, and working with people to solve problems together.

But instead, we got decisions made in isolation, by people who never wanted this to work in the first place. And now, we’re left with a broken, expensive system that delivers late, poor-quality food, and nothing of real value to the kids who need it most.

The solutions are right there — they’ve always been there — but this Government isn’t interested in working with people. They’ve made up their mind:
 Cut the funding.
 Blame the families.
 Stand back and watch communities turn on each other.

That’s not leadership. That’s cynical politics — and our kids deserve so much better.

The Final Question — Where’s the Saved Money Gone?

And here’s the kicker—if they’ve slashed over $100 million from Ka Ora, Ka Ako, and they’ve cut disability funding too, then where’s all that money gone?

Cutting spending sounds responsible if you’re reinvesting that money into fixing the root causes—like wages that don’t cover the basics, runaway rents, or skyrocketing grocery prices.

But none of that has happened.

There’s been no serious action on lifting wages so working families can actually get ahead. No rent control to stop landlords hiking prices every few months. No real push to break up supermarket monopolies to make food affordable again.

The money’s just disappeared. Gone. And in its place? More cuts. More division. More blame placed on the very people who needed the support.

And here’s what really needs to be asked—why is a government willing to cut disability funding to the bone suddenly so interested in keeping a school lunch programme alive?

This is where the pattern becomes clear. They’re not keeping it to help families. They’re keeping it so they can weaponise it. They want the programme to fail slowly and painfully, so they can hold it up as an example of so-called waste and failed handouts. They want to stoke resentment, turning working New Zealanders against vulnerable families, the disabled community, and anyone who relies on help to get by.

It’s no accident that the groups they target for cuts—disabled people, low-income families, struggling parents—are the very people who have the hardest time fighting back. People working two jobs don’t have time to march on Parliament. Disabled New Zealanders are already exhausted from fighting for the basic support they need to live. Parents scraping by don’t have the energy to write submissions or lobby MPs.

This is the pattern I see, and it’s one we all need to see. This government isn’t cutting waste—they’re cutting people they think won’t fight back. And then they use those same people as political pawns to divide the rest of us.

This is why programmes like Ka Ora, Ka Ako matter so much. They’re not just about food—they’re about fairness. About recognising that no child asks to be born into struggle. That no parent wants to send their kid to school hungry. And that no disabled New Zealander should have to fight every day just for basic dignity.

So when this government slashes these programmes and can’t even show you where the money went, it’s not fiscal responsibility—it’s political cruelty.

What Unity Stands For

At Unity, we will always stand with every family doing their best in a broken system. We will always speak up for people being told to "just work harder" when they’re already working every hour they can.

Because leadership isn’t about cuts and blame—it’s about listening and working together.

And that’s the whole point of this episode. It’s not just about school lunches, or housing, or wages—it’s about teaching each other to see the patterns. When you start noticing how these same tactics show up again and again—cut, blame, divide—you can’t unsee it.

That’s how we piece together unity—not by ignoring the game, but by exposing it, so we can rewrite the rules together.

OUTRO

I’m not wrapping this up with the usual “thanks for listening” today, because honestly — I’m angry.

I’m angry that politicians who sit in Wellington on six-figure salaries think they can lecture working families about “personal responsibility” while they rip away every bit of support those families rely on.

I’m angry that struggling families and disabled people — people who are already fighting just to get through each day — are being used as political punching bags to distract us from what’s really going on.

And I’m angry that the people who should be standing up for those communities — the ones who claim to represent us — are either silent, or they’re playing along with this cynical, divide-and-conquer game.

So no — we’re not ending with a tidy message today.

We’re ending with a challenge. If you’re angry too, if you’re tired of being told it’s your fault for needing help when the whole system is rigged against you — then it’s time to start speaking up.

Because the only way we stop this pattern — is by naming it, calling it out, and refusing to play along.

That’s the fight we’re in. And that’s the fight Unity is here for.