Martin Tracey: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18464. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill from its first reading through to select committee consideration. We do so because I think that if nothing else has been obvious here tonight what is obvious is that there needs to be a conversation about this issue. There are strong feelings on both sides.I want to pick up on a point because of the demographic that my party spends a lot of time with. It often comes up this issue of parental responsibility and who should feed children. It is really interesting having that conversation with that age demographic. I say to them: “When you went to school you got milk every day right?” which they acknowledge is true. And when they went to school they got fruit every day. Yet there was not a single headline that said their parents were neglectful parents. There was not a single headline in the 1950s through to the 1970s that said having the State feed children meant that their parents did not give a damn. It was not a conversation about that. It was a conversation about: “These are the children of our country—give them something to eat.”Claudette Hauiti: Milk isn’t about that—it’s about health.TRACEY MARTIN: I do not believe that there is a single member in this House who if a child came and knocked on their door and was hungry would not feed thatchild. I do not believe that Ms Hauiti would not feed that child. I do not believe that Ms Hauiti would say: “Go home to your parents even though there is no food in your cupboard and you tell your parents that is their responsibility.” Of course she would not. That is not what she is saying. This is the conversation we need to have.From a New Zealand First perspective we are not 100 percent sold on this bill. In some ways it is too broad and in some ways it is too narrow. If I can just explain that as we have heard this bill would actually provide breakfast and lunch for every child in decile 1 and decile 2 schools. In one way that is too broad. There are many children who are fine. I am talking particularly about theKāwhia coast up there in the hills there inHauturu where there are some decile 2 schools. Those kids’ lunch boxes are fine. They are fine. They are full ofhomebaking. They have got sandwiches andrēwena bread and so on and so forth. They do not need this programme. But then I could also take the author of this bill to a decile 8 school in Warkworth with the largest Kiribati community in the whole of New Zealand with children showing up who do not have food. And it is not because their parents are lazy. It is not because their parents do not care or do not love their children. As a country we should not tell people to go to their church and prove they are good enough to get some charity. That is not where we want to be. That was 18th century England; this is 21st century New Zealand.We need to have this conversation. If we have children showing up at schools without food let us have a conversation about one feeding the children appropriately and two fixing the cause. If we ignore this issue if we do not have a conversation about putting the children first in this issue—not again talking about the adults when it is the children who are paying the price as we just had in the last bill under debate the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. Deal with the adults after we feed the children.I am not going to take much more time. New Zealand First will support this bill because we believe that there needs to be a conversation. It is a shame that the Government does not believe it can actually have a conversation about this just like the bill just before this where Government members tried not to stand and speak. Give the people of New Zealand an opportunity to come in and tell you what they think. This is supposed to be a House of Representatives. This is supposed to be one of the finest democracies in the Western World. People come to see our select committee process because it is the best part of our democracy. Do not stop the voice of New Zealanders coming in. Let them have their say then do as you will. Let them decide at the polls but let them have their say.