Kedgley Sue: General Debate 
Kedgley Sue: General Debate 
[Volume:625;Page:20489] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I know that this House is preoccupied with matters of Mr Doone and so forth but ordinary people in New Zealand are concerned about other issues as well. One of them is featured in today’s Christchurch  
Press 
 where a huge headline states: “Children’s teeth rotting away”. The article reports an epidemic of tooth decay in Christchurch and how young children are having half of their teeth removed and that there is a huge waiting list of children needing teeth removed. The clinical director of the Canterbury District Health Board’s school and community dental service Dr Martin Lee says that the main reason for this epidemic of tooth decay is that children’s diets are overloaded with sugar. In particular he points to high-sugar drinks. 
We have respected community clinicians pointing out to us that high-sugar fizzy drinks and foods are the major culprits in the epidemic of tooth decay amongst our children and we know they are also the main reason for the epidemic of obesity and for the numbers of children getting diabetes at younger and younger ages. If that is the case why are high-sugar fizzy drinks in particular and also junk food on sale in vending machines in most publicly funded secondary schools in New Zealand? Why are we collectively wringing our hands about the obesity epidemic and dental decay if we are not prepared to take very simple small steps like removing the food and drink that we know is contributing to dental decay obesity and diabetes? The Government last year with great fanfare launched Healthy Eating—Healthy Action a national strategy on nutrition but why despite all those nicely printed national strategies on healthy eating is it doing nothing about the atrocious food sold in our schools that is undermining its strategy? 
About a month or so ago a researcher in the Green Party looked up on the Internet the school lunches that are sold in tuck-shops in 50 primary and secondary schools around New Zealand—just the schools that had their lunches printed on the Net. We found that the overwhelming majority of the school menus on offer had pies hot dogs sausage rolls chips cookies doughnuts cakes and chocolate. Most—68 percent—did not even include fruit on the menu. There was not a roll or sandwich on the menu of 22 percent of the schools we surveyed and in 24 percent the roll or sandwich was more expensive than the pie. 
To understand why we are in the midst of epidemics of childhood obesity and diabetes we need look no further than those school lunches. We worked out that a child eating what is on offer in most of those schools—say a pie chips a cookie and a fizzy drink for lunch—would be consuming 10 teaspoons of fat and 20 teaspoons of sugar for lunch. Most parents would not feed their children a constant diet of pies sausage rolls doughnuts and chips which we know contribute to obesity diabetes and dental decay. So why are we allowing our schools to sell that sort of food? 
This has prompted the Green Party to launch a school food campaign in order to get unhealthy food and drink out of our schools. It is a very very simple campaign. All we are aiming for is that the Minister of Education will change the National Administration Guidelines and the National Education Guidelines to require schools to develop a policy that only healthy food and drink can be sold—only food that encourages good eating habits and does not contribute to obesity diabetes or dental decay. This is extraordinarily simple. It does not require a legislative change. 
Last year to his great credit Mr Mallard amended the national educational goals and school guidelines to require all schools to give priority to physical education and that is fantastic. He did it quietly overnight—a little rule change that is having a significant impact in schools. So now we are saying that that is fine to Mr Mallard—or I think it might now be Mr Benson-Pope—but we would like him to make a similarly simple change to require that only healthy food and drink is to be sold in schools. I can assure him that there is huge support for this campaign because parents are horrified about the food that is being sold in schools.