Lee Melissa: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2408. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the this bill; however I am opposing this bill. I commend the member David Shearer. I do actually work with him in the electorate of Mt Albert—he is the elected member and I am the list member and we often are seen together at many different events around the electorate. But for this particular bill I have to say that I do not agree with him that we should actually teach kids how to grow vegetables. Well I guess you could teach kids how to grow vegetables and you could actually teach kids how to cook food and learn how to make gravy. We used to have that in our curriculum. I think that when I was in high school in Malaysia—Simon O’Connor: Just a few years ago.MELISSA LEE: —yes a couple of years ago we did actually have cookery lessons and we also had typing lessons as well on a typewriter. That was a long time ago. We do actually have a New Zealand curriculum and for me I wonder why the parents cannot actually teach the kids about gardening at home. Why does it have to be introduced at school? The member who just sat down Tracey Martin talked about this bill being inaptly named “Food in Schools”. Well it does actually say “Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill”.Earlier my learned colleague Paul Foster-Bell talked about his school life experience and I just wanted to go back to my childhood and talk about how different it was for me to grow up in a country like Korea in the late 1970s. Often people ask: “What was it like for you? How many kids were in your classroom?” and all that sort of stuff. I often say that I grew up in a very normal Korean primary school. I remember only primary school because I was there only for primary school and there were 65 kids in my classroom. In every year level there were about 20 classes and there were thousands of kids in a primary school. They were not decile schools like New Zealand. Not one single student was ever provided lunch by the school. It was the responsibility of the parents or the grandparents who were raising these kids to have them bring their own lunch. It was the responsibility of the parents and the grandparents who were raising these kids to feed them breakfast. It was the responsibility of the parents to look after their children.I remember during cold winter days when after you washed your face you walked to school and your eyebrows actually froze over because it was that cold and we all had our lunchboxes in the urn that was in the middle of the classroom. This was in the 1970s. Korea was decimated in the 1950 Korean War. It was almost like the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. It was about children learning good education. It is not about learning how to grow your own food and eat it because you are hungry. Well it should be the responsibility of the family. Not all poor children attend decile 1 or decile 2 schools.Earlier speakers have talked about the KickStart Breakfast programme that the Government is already funding. Over 3.4 million breakfasts have been served and now it reaches about 26000 children. That to me is a little sad you know having grown up in a country that was decimated by war and yet in the 1970s only 20 years after the war the parents knew their responsibility. Korea did not have social welfare; New Zealand does. New Zealand has one of the most progressive social welfare systems and yet there are parents who will send their children to school without breakfast without lunches and shame on them. That is not all parents.I have to say that as a parent who is raising a teenage child it would be fantastic if the Government actually took care of my child so that I would be richer. Would it not be fantastic? But thank God that I am not raising a teenage daughter because she would be a lot more expensive. But this is about responsible Government looking after the welfare of all New Zealanders and good for those parents who will look after their children by providing breakfast lunch and dinner and for the welfare of their children. It is the responsibility of the parents not the Government. Thank you very much.