Turei Metiria: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18463. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): What a bizarre argument—to say that we should not be addressing the very real needs that we see every day in schools in this country. Hungry kids are coming to school and they are unable to learn and some bizarre argument is being laid out by Claudette Hauiti who is saying that the Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill is somehow the rejection of rangatiratanga which is just ridiculous. Tell that to the children who are hungry and who need to be fed. My apologies Mr Deputy Speaker for my passion but it is just not acceptable to have this kind of argument being played out in this House.What we know is that children are going to school hungry and need to be fed. We are a Parliament that has a responsibility for the well-being of the people in this country including our children. We have a responsibility to put children at the heart of all the decisions we make in this Parliament and we fail to do that over and over. This legislation gives us one more opportunity. An opportunity has already been lost tonight with the Paid Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill debacle we saw earlier this evening. This is the second opportunity tonight for this Parliament to say that our children come first that our children’s needs come first and that we will do what it takes to make that happen.The Green Party is proud to support this bill. We also have proposed a school lunch fund to help provide assistance to those families those children and the schools teachers principals and communities that are affected to make sure that our kids do not go hungry. We know that a child who is well and who is well-fed is ready to learn. If we want to combat the effects of poverty on our communities we must make sure that our kids get the best possible education. Therefore we have an obligation to remove the barriers that prevent them from doing so and hunger is a barrier to kids’ learning.This legislation sets out one method for achieving that aim of protecting our children as we are obliged to do as members of Parliament. We listen to the prayer every day inthis House when we are sitting in this Chamber that asks us to put the well-being of the people of this country ahead of all else. Do we take that seriously or not?The Green Party proposal for a school lunch fund is slightly different from this one and it was set out in our paper on schools as community hubs. Catherine Delahunty and I and other Green MPs have been very proud to travel the country talking with schools about those proposals which include the school lunch fund. Our design of the fund would be so it is available to children in schools from decile 1 to 4—so a slight extension from this legislation—so the schools are able to use that money to provide lunch for their own kids as they best see fit. Some communities have got great relationships with businesses that will donate food. Other schools will have—Catherine Delahunty: Rangatiratanga.METIRIA TUREI: That is right Catherine Delahunty—this is about schools exercising their rangatiratanga their choice and their control. Other schools have community gardens where they need someone to help with the production of that food so that the kids themselves along with parents and volunteers can actually turn that food into lunches. They are working together cooking together and sharing food together. Our plan would be to provide that fund to schools to use as they best see fit to provide lunch to their kids in the way that best meets the needs of those children because those communities know what their problems are and they know how to devise the solutions to those problems. That is very similar to the proposals that have been put in this bill.We would very much like to see the bill go to a select committee so we have a discussion on how we should meet the responsibilities as a collective as a country for the needs of our kids. The best situation would be of course that we did not need this bill. That would be preferable so that is why we need a living wage. That is why we need decent benefits—so families can survive. That is why we need sustainable jobs and an environment that is clean and healthy—so we can go and collect our own kai knowing that it is safe for our kids and us to eat. In the meantime until we get to that point—because we are not there yet—we must make sure that no child suffers because of the neglect we have seen of their families over decades. That neglect is our responsibility to fix and this legislation gives us one more opportunity to do so. Let us not waste that. Thank you.