Collins Judith: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2404. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I have been listening very carefully to the debate tonight and I note that the member who has just resumed his seat Chris Hipkins gave a very passionate speech about it. He acknowledged that the Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill did not solve the issues but that it would lead if it went to select committee to a lot of talking about it. I may be paraphrasing him there but that is exactly what he sort of said.I think everybody in this House would agree that the situation of young children going to school without breakfast and being hungry until lunchtime or even until they go home again is a very sorry thing to happen in this country—this land of plenty God’s own country. I was very interested to hear Dr Jian Yang and his speech that referenced his own growing up and his parents’ growing up and what they went through. I would also say that in my electorate in Papakura we have breakfast clubs—and that is generally how they are referred to—in some of our schools particularly in some of the lower-decile schools. I have quite a few schools in my electorate that are decile 1 and decile 2. We have some of the poorest people in the country in my electorate. We also by the way have some of the wealthiest. So there is a huge disparity. I would also say that not all children who go to high-decile schools are wealthy children or from wealthy families. There are some children who come to our decile 10 schools our decile 8 schools—in fact I am going to see one on Friday with exactly this situation—who come from homes that are at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum and they often suffer.I do not believe for a moment that because a family does not have a lot of money they cannot put two pieces of bread in the toaster and some margarine or butteror whatever and jam or something on the toast for their child. But we know that sometimes both parents are working sometimes there is only one parent who is generally home anyway with the child—maybe it is a sole-parent family—and that parent may be out working and not able to see the child off to school. We also know that some people simply do not make this a priority for their children. I do not think that they necessarily do not care about their children but actually there are quite a few people in our country who do not understand the benefit of a child having breakfast before they go to school because they did not have it when they were growing up and their parents probably did not have it when they were growing up and they just do not understand it.But what we do see in my electorate are quite a few breakfast clubs for the children who come along and as some of my school principals have said to me some of the kids coming into those breakfast clubs do not actually need to come in. There are many children who do need to and it is great that we have got them but in some schools they encourage lots of kids to come because it actually takes away the stigma for the child. It also actually builds a sense of community for the child to come to school and they have got something to do straight away and it is a really fun activity; it is not sitting down listening to someone else telling them what to do—it is actually a fun thing. The KickStart Breakfast programme that we have got is available to any school that wants it and I think that is better than just trying to target particular schools. I think we had to start off targeting particular schools because of the numbers of schools that we had to deal with in quite a short period of time. I would also say that the KickStart Breakfast programme is a real opportunity for some very successful companies like Sanitarium and Fonterra which have by the way benefited for many years from New Zealand and being part of New Zealand. We support them obviously in all the things that we are seen to do as New Zealanders and these companies have an opportunity—and they do—to help to contribute back to the very people who by the way have helped to make their fortunes. That is what I think is a really great thing.One of the problems of having yet another committee look at something is that in the meantime these children need breakfast. You cannot wait a year and wonder why they have not got a breakfast. It does not work like that. We have already got the KickStart Breakfast programme. It is really feeding children right across the spectrum and it is also a great way for kids to start the day. I would like to see that continue and so the issue that Mr Shearer brought to the table is an issue that is being redressed. It is not actually for every child but it is being redressed and the opportunity is there for every school no matter what their decile to take this up for their children. I think that is a challenge for every school to do so.