Yang Jian: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYang Jian: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2401. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak briefly on the Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill in its first reading. First of all I acknowledge the honourable member David Shearer who put forward this particular bill. Actually I believe David Shearer is a fine man. I did a search online on Wikipedia—although when I was an academic I did not allow my students to use Wikipedia as a source of reference. I was looking at Wikipedia and David Shearer along with his wife was named the New Zealander of the Year by the New Zealand Herald in 1992 and the following year he was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the British New Year honours list. He also did humanitarian work in different parts of the world including Liberia Rwanda Albania Belgrade Israel Lebanon and Iraq. So he has quite extraordinary experience and I believe that he could have been a very good Leader of the Opposition but unfortunately he did not have the support of his caucus. Now we—Carmel Sepuloni: Are you going to talk about the bill? When are you going to talk about the bill?Dr JIAN YANG: Well the reason why I say this is that I appreciate the member’s intention of helping children from poor families.Looking at the main provisions of the bill basically—look at this—it inserts a new part in the Education Act 1989 that provides for the Secretary of Education to designate organisations as “food in school providers” and to set out the basis on which schools are eligible for receiving assistance from food in school providers. Also a designated food in school provider must provide food to students in schools if the school board has requested assistance and the school has been defined as eligible for notice and also if it is a State primary school. The fund is appropriated by Parliament and the food in school providers must be paid a general grant. So these are some of the main provisions.Also the member has stated in the bill’s explanatory note that “There is substantive evidence from New Zealand and around the world that hunger has a significant impact on children’s cognitive development learning and classroom behaviour. … If kids turn up to school not having eaten breakfast without shoes or sick because their house is cold and damp it is obvious they will not get the best start. Addressing this problem is one of the most important actions we can take to lift New Zealand’s educational achievement.”I have to say that it is very hard to disagree. These are good observations but the point is that the Government has been doing all sorts of things to help our kids. We say it is important to help kids from poor families. It is important. I had a look at the KickStart Breakfast programme online and it states that “Schools say Kickstart Breakfast clubs are not only helping children nutritionally but is also making a positive impact on learning behaviour. In-school research shows: literacy and numeracy levels are improving; children are happier have more energy and are able to concentrate longer; children are no longer eating junk food at morning tea; the club provides a great environment for children to socialise together; the older children are taking on responsibility and looking after the younger ones.” So I would say that it is indeed important for us to make sure that our kids have food in school.I also meant to mention my educational background and also my family background. I come from a family of teachers. My parents were teachers—they are now retired—and my parents-in-law are also retired teachers. My younger brother is still working in China as a deputy principal and my sister-in-law is also working in the education sector in China. So very interestingly of course now I have moved to New Zealand and as chair of the Education and Science Committee I would say that education is fundamental to our kids and to our future. I would also mention that I experienced poverty myself. All my family were sent to the countryside in the 1960s as part of a Chinese programme called “Intellectuals Need to be Educated”—or re-educated—“by Peasants”. My parents were sent to the countryside to work as peasants and so I witnessed poverty in China and I also saw numerous poor kids going to school because in those years China was under socialism and everyone was equal but everyone was poor. So for my family it was similar.We would say that it is important and I totally agree with the member David Shearer that it is important but the National Government is already fulfilling the purpose of the bill—that is we have undertaken a number of initiatives to help our kids. I note for example the KickStart Breakfast programme. Fonterra and Sanitarium partnered in February 2009 to provide a free school breakfast of Anchor milk and Weet-Bix to all New Zealand schools. The Government then expanded KickStart Breakfast as part of a programme to better support vulnerable children with an investment of $9.5 million over 5 years. That was in May 2013. So the investment enabled the programme to be extended from 2 days to 5 days a week and it was opened up to all schools from decile 1 to 10. So basically we are saying that not all poor children attend decile 1 and 2 schools. Some poor children also go to higher-decile schools.With the KickStart Breakfast programme extended to schools of every decile it targets more kids in need and more than 95000 nutritious breakfasts are now served each week in the over 730 schools that run their own KickStart Breakfast club. Over 3.4 million breakfasts have been served and we are now reaching more than 28000 children. Also we have our Children’s Action Plan which is a plan that focuses resources on the kids most in need. And we also have KidsCan. The Government is increasing support for KidsCan providing $1.5 million over 3 years in order to provide children with basic necessities like raincoats and shoes. That is why we do not need this legislation to launch a Government-funded programme to support the delivery of food or meals in schools. We are already doing this in partnership with corporate and not-for-profit groups.Budget 2014 also supported our young families. For example we invested almost $500 million more in the well-being of New Zealand’s children and families. Budget 2014 also provided a comprehensive package of practical measures focused on young families and those vulnerable children who most need our care and protection. An example here is that Budget 2014 committed $42 million to increase the parental tax credit from its previous maximum amount of $150 a week to $220 a week and also from 1 April 2015 it increases the period for which the tax credit is paid from 8 weeks to 10 weeks following the birth of a child. Also free doctors visits and prescriptions for children aged under 6 will be extended to children aged under 13 from July 2015—