Russell
Palmer Political reporter
Staff
at the Ministry of Education assigned to the Healthy School
Lunches programme spent about $130,000 on travel in a
year.
Remodelled under Associate Education Minister
David Seymour in an effort to save taxpayer money, the
programme has come under renewed criticism this week after
the
Audit Office found unfair procurement practices and
inadequate monitoring of value for money.
Now, an
Official Information Act response
to a request from the Taxpayers’ Union has revealed details
around staffing and travel expenses.
The documents
show the equivalent of 37 total full-time staff work at the
ministry work on the school lunches programme, which is
largely delivered through external providers.
Nine
of those had “manager” job titles, a further 22 were senior,
principal or lead advisors, with the remainder being four
programme coordinators and a “development chef”.
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Two
communications advisors were also dedicated to the scheme,
with the ministry citing the need for continuity on the
programmes.
“For example, across 2025, the
communications team responded to over 1500 requests for
information regarding the Healthy School Lunches
programme.”
The 12 staff hired since the start of 2025
were on starting rates of a combined minimum $1.1 million a
year, half of those in senior roles earning more than
$100,000 a year.
Recruitment since 1 January 2025
includes:
- One strategy and partnerships manager
in a band of at least $142k to $214k* - Two service
delivery managers on at least $121k to $181k* - Three
staff in a senior administrator band of about $100k to
$108k - Six senior advisors on about $74k to
$86k
* Uses pay band information from late
2023 to mid 2024
The general manager of the
programme alone spent more than $17,600 between April 2025
and the start of March on accommodation and travel between
Wellington and his home in Rotorua.
More than $10,000
was spent in the same time period on one staff member taking
three trips – including flights, accommodation, meals,
transport and parking – to the Chatham Islands to “implement
the internal model at three schools”.
The ministry’s
response also said it had no “analysis, briefings or advice”
on appropriate staffing for a programme primarily delivering
services through external providers.
In a statement,
Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Austin Ellingham-Banks said
the ministry had “outsourced the lunches but kept the
bureaucracy”.
“For all that overhead, the
Auditor-General found the ministry ‘did not have
sufficiently robust mechanisms to measure, manage, and
monitor’ the programme. What on earth are they all
doing?”
In a statement, Associate Education Minister
David Seymour said the staff are managing 333 providers
delivering 36,000,000 meals to 1019 schools, per
year.
“The taxpayers union are right there are
contracts, but when you manage contracts worth over $200m a
year you do actually need to monitor them.
“The ACT
Party campaigned to stop the whole program but was
overruled. The Taxpayers’s Union ought to put a smile on it
after we saved $360 million for the taxpayer, but I’ve never
heard them celebrate
it.”
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