The axing of the clean car discount, scrapping the Reserve Bank mandate to consider sustainable employment, fair pay agreements, disestablishing Te Aka Whai Ora and cancelling Auckland’s regional fuel tax are just some of them.
There hasn’t been much built, except increases in car registration fees, benefit cuts, fuel tax hikes and increases in public transport costs, and the little wee 45c increase in the minimum hourly wage.
In a cost of living crisis, government is putting up a lot of costs while lowering incomes, which seems counterintuitive, to be polite about it.
That is not to say that programmes should never be reviewed to improve delivery and outcomes. Of course they should. But a review should not start with an intention to slash the budget in half. That is not evidence-based policy — it is ideology.
So let’s set ideology aside for a moment and come back to first principles for this programme. The first principle is that children need to be fed properly so they are healthy and well.
Is this the primary responsibility of the family? Yes. Do they always meet that obligation? No. Should the kids go hungry anyway? No.
I don’t think that’s an ideological position, so we get there pretty easily. It is not the kid’s fault when, for reasons beyond their control, they haven’t had enough to eat.
The next part is a bit harder. How do we decide how to feed the kids who are hungry?
The Ka Ora Ka Ako programme answers the question in a very straightforward way. They deliver the food within the school environment because at school they can access most children most of the time.
The programme is not a panacea for all the reasons children don’t eat enough. And it won’t reach every hungry child every day. Feeding kids at school is not going to fix every problem the child is facing. But it does mean they at least don’t have to face those problems hungry.
The programme means most hungry kids are being fed most of the time. Does it matter that some kids who eat well most of the time are getting the food too? Should a school food programme only target specific hungry kids? How do we know that they are hungry?
Family income is one indication that food might be scarce at home. Goodness knows that costs of everything are rising.
But middle-class and wealthy families also have their problems. Substance abuse, physical abuse and family trauma affect all kinds of families and their children will be affected too, wealthy or poor.
Neglect is a feature of poor parenting, not poverty. But politicians love to decide who is deserving and who isn’t — it is what "targeting" is all about.
How then are schools supposed to pick who gets fed? Surveys, questionnaires, weighing scales?
How can we ensure only the appropriately hungry are fed? Is there a scale of hungry? Is the answer to "please sir, can I have some more?" a definitive no?
Do we want hungry children to have to sign in, maybe be allocated two lunches a week each? Who is going to manage that? Teachers? Principals? Do we really want them policing lunch queues for insufficiently hungry children?
This is the targeted-policy conundrum. How many hungry children should we not feed to make sure we only feed the right hungry children?
Because if the answer is "for goodness sake just feed the kids who want to be fed" then we land on what always seems to be the hard question. How much should we collectively spend feeding hungry kids? Perhaps ideologically, or more probably maternally, I think we spend what is necessary to keep the kids well while they are in school.
Certainly review the research to be properly informed and listen to the evidence from schools about the programme. Let the children and young people have a voice too — we make bright, articulate and passionate kids in Aotearoa and what they think matters too.
And then make decisions based on the best information and an eye on the first principle: children need to be fed properly so they are healthy and well.
■ Metiria Stanton-Turei is a law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
