$3 Buck Chuck: How the Coalition Fed Our Kids to a British Multinational
They cut the food off the kids' plates so a FTSE 100 caterer could ship the profit to London. That's the whole fucking story. Everything else is decoration.
They cut the food off the kids’ plates so a FTSE 100 caterer could ship the profit to London. That’s the whole fucking story. Everything else is decoration.
Let me tell you what happened, because the mainstream press keeps burying the lede under David Seymour’s smug little press-conference smirk.
In 2019 the previous government stood up a programme called Ka Ora, Ka Ako — Healthy School Lunches. By 2023 it was feeding around 242,000 kids in over 1,000 schools — a quarter of the country’s students — for roughly $323 million a year, using more than 150 local suppliers: iwi and hapū providers, community trusts, small caterers, marae kitchens, local sparkies and cooks paid local wages that got spent in local shops.
An independent Value-for-Investment evaluation out of Waipapa Taumata Rau/University of Auckland found the programme was doing exactly what it was designed to do — alleviating hunger, improving nutrition, supporting local jobs, reducing barriers to learning. ([University of Auckland](https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2025/10/24/free-school-lunch-evaluation-raises-concerns-about-funding.html), [BMC Public Health study](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12539167/))
Then the coalition rocked up and lit the whole fucking thing on fire.
The heist, in plain English
David Seymour — the same bloke who once suggested fining parents for truancy — decided $8.90 a lunch for a growing teenager was unaffordable extravagance. Not $2.9 billion in landlord tax breaks. Not the tobacco excise reversal. **Kids’ lunches.** ([The Daily Blog](https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/11/01/3-buck-chuck-vs-2000-jobs/))
In October 2024 he handed the contract for Years 7 and up to a consortium called the School Lunch Collective — fronted by British multinational Compass Group, with Libelle and Gilmours attached. Reported value: $85 million a year, two-year deal. Price per meal: dropped from up to $8.69 to $3. Internal-model schools (the ones cooking their own food) got cut from $8+ to $4 a meal — and that $4 has to cover the wages of the person making it. ([Office of the Auditor-General](https://oag.parliament.nz/media/2025/school-lunches), [1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/10/27/school-lunches-overhaul-will-be-heavily-felt-by-community-caterer/))
Seventy-five local suppliers lost their contracts on 24 December 2024. Around 2,000 jobs on the line. Trust House alone laid off 47 people. Iwi/hapū providers watched years of work vaporise. ([The Daily Blog](https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/11/01/3-buck-chuck-vs-2000-jobs/))
Merry fucking Christmas.
Officials — the government’s own officials — wrote a memo dated 23 September 2024 begging the Ministry to **exclude Compass and Libelle from consideration** because of “serious concerns” over billing breaches, food-safety failings, and a track record of losing 60% of their existing school contracts between 2021 and 2024. Seymour signed the deal anyway. ([Reddit summary of the memo](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1lu47vz/serious_concerns_officials_urged_school_lunch/), [Q+A interview](
Who the fuck is Compass Group?
This is the bit the government doesn’t want plastered on the six o’clock news.
Compass Group PLC is a FTSE 100 company listed on the London Stock Exchange. Global revenue in 2025: $46.1 billion US dollars. Underlying operating profit: over $3.3 billion. The world’s largest catering multinational. Clients include Microsoft, Shell, Harvard Business School and — now — a couple of hundred thousand hungry New Zealand schoolkids. ([Compass Group FY25 annual reporte](https://www.compass-group.com/en/investors/annual-report-2025.html), [Compass Group corporate site](https://www.compass-group.com/en/who-we-are.html))
In New Zealand, Compass pulled in about $296.5 million in revenue in its last reported year — a big chunk of it from public contracts (schools, hospitals, defence). In 2024 the local subsidiary paid a $53.3 million dividend to its UK parent and shipped another $6 million in royalties offshore. ([CICTAR / NZ Herald analysis](https://cictar.org/news/nzh/compass), [BusinessDesk analysis](https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/business-of-health/compass-how-a-global-catering-giant-gobbles-up-hospital-contracts))
Fifty-three million dollars. Straight out of the country. In the same year they were being handed the contract to feed our poorest kids for three bucks a plate.
Tell me again who the “welfare bludgers” are.
The dog’s breakfast in action
From day one of Term 1, 2025 it was a disaster. Not “teething issues” — a full-blown, documented, kids-in-hospital disaster.
- A Year 9 student in **Gisborne ended up in hospital with second-degree burns** after a Compass lunch reheated in packaging **not designed for commercial reheating** exploded on him. ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/03/17/lunch-that-burnt-student-in-packaging-not-designed-for-commercial-reheating/))
- Kids ate melted plastic off their meals. Others found pieces of glass. Term 1 alone: 63 food safety complaints, incidents and queries — nearly double the same term the year before. ([Otago Daily Times](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/glass-pieces-melted-plastic-school-lunch-investigations-continue-rnz))
- Ham found in meals labelled ”halal friendly.” Beef mince served in “vegan” meals. Allergy meals given to the wrong students — MPI complaint laid. ([The Spinoff](https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/28-02-2025/drums-beat-louder-for-new-school-lunches-to-be-scrapped))
- Mouldy mince served to primary-aged kids in December 2025. Lunches left unrefrigerated for three days.
- On 11 March 2025, Libelle Group — the outfit contracted by Compass to make 125,000 meals a day — went into liquidation. Incidentally, I applied for work there and the pay was minimum wage to run a province of tuck shops.
Deloitte in as liquidators. Seymour, straight-faced: *”the liquidation process will not materially impact the provision of meals.”* ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/03/12/stanford-seymour-discuss-whole-range-of-school-lunch-issues-in-meeting/))
Meanwhile the Minister was on Q+A crowing about ”99.96% delivered on time.” Mate, if I serve you shit on a plate at 12:01 sharp is that a win? ([Q+A / Seymour interview](
What the teachers and principals actually said
Not the ACT talking points. The people in the fucking room with the kids.
The NZ Principals’ Federation wrote to Seymour in February 2025 demanding the entire system be scrapped and lunches returned to local providers, citing widespread food wastage, disruption to learning, and a “global company” failing to meet expectations. ([The Spinoff](https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/28-02-2025/drums-beat-louder-for-new-school-lunches-to-be-scrapped))
The PPTA (Post Primary Teachers’ Association) — who had publicly *applauded* the previous programme in 2024 — filed a **Waitangi Tribunal claim (Wai 3310)** in May 2025 that specifically calls out Ka Ora, Ka Ako. Their claim reports independent analysis finding the new lunches provide **roughly half the energy expected**, are **30–40% smaller than the previous meals**, and that **not one** of the 13 analysable meals met all nutrition standards for all age groups. They call it “a breach of the Crown’s duty to actively protect tauira Māori”.
Aorere College principal Leanne Webb described the meals as “awful” and “disgusting.” ([The Spinoff](https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/28-02-2025/drums-beat-louder-for-new-school-lunches-to-be-scrapped))
Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Aniwaniwa is voluntarily running **tens of thousands of dollars into deficit** to keep feeding their tamariki actual food, because $4 doesn’t cut it. Principal Te Irirangi Tawhara said the coalition dropped their funding **from $8.59 to $4 per meal.** They’re eating the loss themselves rather than serve their kids the crap. ([Māori TV report]
The Health Coalition Aotearoa noted there are no nutritionists employed by the school lunches programme any more. They got made redundant in the wider public service cuts. Of course they fucking did.
What it means for the kid at the desk
Twenty-one percent of NZ kids live in food-insecure households. Thirty-five percent for Māori. Forty percent for Pacific. Food-insecure kids are already 2–4 school years behind in international assessments compared to their food-secure peers, adjusting for socio-economic status. ([Value for Investment analysis, PHCC](https://www.phcc.org.nz/sites/default/files/2024-03/Value%20for%20Investment%20Ka%20Ora%20Ka%20Ako%2019-03-2024%20final.pdf))
For a lot of these kids the school lunch **was the meal**. Not a supplement. The meal.
Now they get half the calories, plastic in the packaging, mystery pasta and if their whānau is unlucky, food poisoning. The Child Poverty Action Group costed the reversal — restoring the previous programme would cost between $107–115 million a year, exactly the amount the coalition ripped out. ([CPAG budget submission](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60189fe639b6d67b861cf5c4/t/67df4952f49fd46ed8adb3df/1742686547100/CPAG+calls+on+Ministers+to+reverse+lunch+cuts+with+Budget+bid.pdf))
Budget 2025 committed zero dollars to the programme beyond 2026. It’s on a cliff edge, exactly as the Greens warned. ([Green Party](https://www.greens.org.nz/budget_2025_leaves_future_of_school_lunches_uncertain))
The root of the whole fucking thing
Here’s where I stop being polite.
This is not incompetence. This is not “teething issues.” This is not a Minister who “got sold a dog.” This is the textbook capitalist manoeuvre: socialise the costs, privatise the profits, ship the surplus offshore.
- The state takes on the cost of feeding children — a cost the market has always refused to price properly, because hungry kids don’t have purchasing power.
- The state builds up the demand, the infrastructure, the distribution — 240,000 guaranteed customers, five days a week, paid for in advance by the taxpayer.
- Then the state hands the contract to a foreign multinational who lobbies its way in past its own officials’ warnings.
- The multinational strips the local supply chain — 75 Kiwi businesses, 2,000 jobs, iwi/hapū providers, all gone by Christmas.
- The multinational cuts the input costs — cheaper food, worse nutrition, mass-produced slop reheated in the wrong packaging.
- The multinational skims the margin and ships the profit — $53 million in one year — to a FTSE 100 head office in London, whose biggest shareholders are American asset managers like Vanguard and BlackRock.
- The kids eat the difference. Literally.
That’s not a bug. That’s the model.
The empire needs feeding, and it doesn’t give a fuck if a nine-year-old in South Auckland has to eat mouldy mince to fund the next share buyback in the City of London. The kids’ hunger is the raw material. Compass is the extraction machine. The dividend is the export.
What to do about it?
Get loud. Get organised. Get local.
1. Back the PPTA Waitangi claim— it’s the sharpest legal challenge on the board right now.
2. Pressure your MP and your board of trustees to formally support returning to the local-supplier model, iwi/hapū included.
3. Support your local school’s internal kitchen — donate, volunteer, buy their raffle tickets. The schools running deficits to feed their kids properly are on the front line.
4. Name Compass Group every single time. Not “the provider.” Not “the caterer.” Compass Group PLC, London Stock Exchange, $53 million dividend offshore in 2024. Say it in every meeting. Say it on every timeline. Make the name radioactive.
5. Vote like your kids’ lunch depends on it. Because it does.
They took food out of children’s mouths to pay a dividend to a London parent company. That is the sentence. That is the fight.
Kia kaha. Feed the kids.
The AI Warrior
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*Sources embedded throughout. Corrections and additions welcome in the comments — send me your school’s story.*