Hipkins Chris: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18465. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a brief call in support of the Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill. I want to start though with the acknowledgment that I do not necessarily think it is the role of schools to be feeding kids but if kids are arriving at school hungry then they are not going to be learning. So this is not an ideal measure. It is ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff. I would rather that we built a fence at the top of the cliff but in the absence of that being there we have to do something. Not doing anything simply is not an option as far as I am concerned.I visit schools up and down the country all the time and I know just how hard schools work to make sure they create an inclusive learning environment and how difficult that can be when kids are arriving at the school gate not ready to learn. It can place enormous strain on the school. It can place enormous strain on the classroom teacher and strain on the other kids. Hungry kids are not kids who are ready to get on with their learning. That is actually an easy problem to fix. Why should we not do it?We have a bizarre sort of attitude to food in schools in New Zealand. We say that it is not the role of the school at all; it is the role of the parents. Actually many othercountries that we compare ourselves with all the time have quite institutionalised food in schools programmes. If you go to a school in the United States or the UK school lunches are commonplace. Those schools actually provide their kids with school lunches. There may be some payment involved in that but it is very standard for the kids to show up at school and be fed at school.Here in New Zealand increasingly we are seeing early childhood services providing food for the kids who are attending those centres. That is perfectly accepted. It is a perfectly accepted part of sending your kid to an early childhood centre that they will be fed while they are there. In doing that the early childhood services are making sure that kids are getting healthy food and they are making sure that they can manage allergies. They can prepare food that is not going to cause issues for any of the other kids. It is actually a perfectly acceptable and healthy thing. So I am not sure why there is this sort of ideological opposition to the idea that schools could be providing meals for the kids who need them.I think really we should be looking at this from the perspective that if kids are hungry let us get on with it and feed them so that the schools can actually be focused on doing what we really want them to do which is making sure that kids get the best possible education. It is really simple: hungry kids do not learn. I know—and I think we can all speak from experience—that when you are hungry you get a bit scratchy you get a bit grumpy and you have more difficulty focusing on whatever it is that you are doing. Adults have that problem; kids have that problem. Let us make sure—Metiria Turei: Yes that’s right.Catherine Delahunty: Look at Anne Tolley.CHRIS HIPKINS: They definitely have that problem around here. Maybe we should have more food—I do not know. But let us just get on with it and let us deal with the problem.One of the things that I have been really interested to see in schools around the country is the response to the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme because actually some of the concerns that are being raised about this bill were raised about the milk in schools programme when it was first introduced. Actually I have not visited a single school anywhere around the country that has said that milk in schools has not worked for it and has not been good for it. Schools love the programme. Why should it be that we are reliant on charity for programmes like that to happen? Actually the Government should be making sure that things like that are going on. I think it is fantastic that Fonterra is putting a bit of money into the milk in schools programme and putting that support in. Fisher and Paykel are also supporting it by supplying the fridges.It is an excellent programme. The milk arrives and the kids actually have a role—they go and pick up the milk and take it to their classrooms. They make sure that more milk is put into the fridge so that the following day there is plenty of cold milk there. The cartons are then collected at the end of the process and taken away and recycled. It is a really good comprehensive programme. Fruit in Schools is very very well supported by the schools in my electorate. They all rave about it. The principals and the teachers all love it. It is a very good programme.But those things—a little carton of milk and a piece of fruit—are not enough to get a child through the day. They actually need to have more sustenance than that. If they are arriving at school hungry we can do something about that. We have got to tackle the causes of kids arriving at school hungry but that is going to take time. In the meantime let us make sure they have got food in their tummies when they are at school so that they can actually focus on learning and so that their teachers can be focused on teaching them rather than dealing with the consequences of them being hungry which far too many schools are having to cope with at the moment.