This is edition 2025/46 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Welcome back. It's 2025 and 20 years since I started writing about politics and anything else that took my fancy. Thank to my VIP members for making this site what it is today. In July we will be having a 20th birthday celebration. Stay tuned for more announcements.
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. The School Lunch Fiasco is not our Politicians' fault. It stems from the NZ Treasury's wrong economic advice.
Rob MacCulloch
- 🏛️ Treasury's Fault: The controversy over school lunches started due to false and misleading advice from NZ Treasury, not from political parties like Labour, National, or ACT.
- 📉 Flawed Evaluation: In 2023, Treasury's evaluation claimed school lunches had no impact on attendance or Māori students' outcomes, including health and wellbeing.
- 🍽️ Difficult Analysis: The impact of school lunches on educational and health outcomes is a complex issue, with debates lasting for nearly 100 years and international studies showing mixed results.
- 🤷♂️ Uncertain Results: Even high-level studies, like those on the US National School Lunch Program, have ambiguous results regarding health outcomes for children in meal programs.
- 🔍 Treasury's Mistake: Treasury made a mistake by prematurely claiming there were no effects from school lunches, using flawed statistical methods, and failing to acknowledge the complexity of the issue.
- 🌱 Political Complexity: Healthy school meal programs are politically charged, with even US Republicans targeting food programs that support local farmers.
- 🤐 Call for Honesty: Treasury should have admitted it lacked enough data to determine the long-term impact of quality school lunches on children's outcomes.
