The Green Party wants to bring back the school lunch programme to what it was, and then expand it to more schools.

The party says if it is part of the next government, it will also permanently fund the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme (which was renamed Healthy School Lunches in October).

The current government made changes to the model, in order to cut down on costs.

The programme had some early teething issues, including poor meal quality and a provider going into liquidation.

But Associate Education Minister David Seymour said in May that on-time delivery has been at almost 100% every day, and complaints had fallen by more than 92%.

The average cost per meal has now dropped to $3.58 across all suppliers, but the Greens want to restore the funding to $6.50 per lunch.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the Greens’ election policy would restore the Ka Ora Ka Ako programme so lunches were provided through schools or local providers, and would expand it to approximately 400 more schools.

Davidson said this would ensure 150,000 more children would get a lunch every day.

“Slashing the school lunch programme’s funding and removing contracts from local providers cost New Zealanders hundreds of local jobs, left half of meals failing minimum nutritional standards and increased food waste. The cut-price programme doesn’t even have secure funding beyond 2028,” she said.

“The goal of a school lunch programme should be providing nutritious school lunches to children, not exploiting government contracts to prioritise profits and overseas shareholders over our tamariki.”

The Greens would extend the programme to schools with an Equity Index over 450.

It estimated that restoring the local provision would bring back up to 2000 jobs, and expanding it would create up to 1900 more.

The policy was costed at $472 million in 2027/28, rising to $602m in 2030/31.

In this year’s Budget, the government extended the programme for another year, but Seymour indicated it was likely changes would be made for 2028 and beyond.

He said $122m would be saved by continuing with the programme as-is in 2027, compared to how much it would cost if the old scheme was still running.

A report from the Auditor-General found the programme was saving money compared to the previous government’s approach, but its performance was not being properly monitored or tracked.