Summarised by Centrist
According to economist Rob MacCulloch of Down to Earth Kiwi, in 2023, Treasury falsely claimed it had definitive proof that school lunches had no impact, even though this is a complex question no one has fully answered.
That bad advice came from the Treasury, not the actions of any particular political party.
The report dismissed the effectiveness of free school lunches, leading then-Finance Minister Grant Robertson to state that the programme had “no effect on attendance & provided little benefit for Māori students.”
“My view is that it was a mistake for the NZ Treasury to pretend it had worked out the effect of quality school lunches on children’s educational & health outcomes when no one else in the world has done so,” he writes.
MacCulloch further argues that school meal programmes are inherently political, referencing recent Republican efforts in the US to cut funding for healthy school lunches, a programme originally championed by Michelle Obama.
He contends that rather than shutting down debate, Treasury should have admitted its limitations. “Treasury should have had the honesty to say that it had no clue whether providing high quality lunches would turn out to be—over the next 50 years—a ‘social investment’ that would improve the outcomes for children who ate them.”
