Martin Tracey: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2407. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): First of all can I just make it very very clear: if the Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill fails to go to select committee it will be because of one person and one person alone and that will be Mr David Seymour. So I ask Mr David Seymour to contact the Government whip and tell him that he is changing his vote and that he will support this bill to select committee and I will tell you why. It is because if the National Party members instead of deciding that this is about feeding hungry children with free lunches had listened to Mr Shearer when he spoke at the beginning they would know that this bill is actually about delivering the New Zealand curriculum. It is about delivering the science curriculum Mr Bell. It is about delivering the living world strand of the science curriculum through growing vegetables. It is about delivering the material world science curriculum inside the New Zealand curriculum which is the chemistry curriculum through the cooking and the preparation of food. It is about the interaction of children with the earth and also the science extension of that: do vegetables grow better in hydroponics or do they grow better in the earth? There is a huge opportunity here Mr Bell and Dr Yang—Paul Foster-Bell: Foster-Bell.TRACEY MARTIN: Mr Foster-Bell I do beg your pardon. We are both on the Education and Science Committee. This is an opportunity for the Education and Science Committee to look at ways to deliver the New Zealand curriculum the science strand and at least two if not three of those strands in a way that actually continues to benefit.I will give you credit for the food that is being delivered inside schools now. Well done! Thank you. This is the long-term plan. That was the short-term plan. Mr Seymour are you listening? This is the long-term answer to this issue: teach children how to grow the food. They will take those lessons home just as our parents took those lessons home. Whether they live in a unit in the middle of Auckland where they can grow vegetables inside flowerpots or whether they live on a quarter acre section somewhere in Ruatōria they will take those lessons home. This is the long-term answer and yet because you are blinded by the title of the bill you will not support it.Mr Seymour pick up the phone. This is an opportunity to make a difference and I suggest—I urge—the National Party members to actually think about what Mr Shearer said. This is the New Zealand curriculum. This is the delivery and this is your long-term solution. We do not want to keep on having to bring sandwiches into schools—nobody does—and this is one of the solutions to it. Short-term answer: deliver sandwiches to schools; long-term answer: teach people to be self-sufficient. Mr Shearer said that in his contribution. Did nobody listen? Were you blinded by the notes you were given by your researchers which were wrong?Look at the bill. Just because it says “food in school providers” does not mean that they are bringing the food in in carts. It could be a person who has been contracted by the school or is under a partial-employment contract with the school to set up those gardens. The schools already have some part of it already there. It may very well be that those in-school providers are the people who take those chemistry lessons who make sure that during the weekends all the materials are there for the children to then come and participate in those gardens. It may be that they are the ones who go out to the communities and source the fruit trees so that we can cut down the costs. How do we know what the cost is? How do we know what the cost is—because this is not about sandwiches. This is about gardens and fruit trees and Mr Shearer told you that when he stood up at the start of it.Listen for goodness’ sake to the contributions. Send the bill to select committee. Give us an opportunity to give you some numbers around it. Give us an opportunity to see how we can make a culture shift inside with the New Zealand curriculum as the basis of it and sort out this problem long term.