Ryan Bridge: Only hungry children should be feed by the state

The government's looking to 'move on' from free school lunches for every kid in a poor school.

David Seymour told me this week they're looking at making changes, potentially tightening things up.

At present, if your kid's school is signed up, your kid automatically gets a lunch.

The only way to stop that is to actually contact the school and opt out on an individual basis.

I reckon they'll change this so parents will have to 'opt in'.

This makes much more sense.

If it's true that half the lunches aren't being eaten, then why waste that resource? It's taxpayer resource.

If the food was good enough for the 50% of kids who did eat it, then why wasn't it good enough for the 50% who didn't?

It's obvious. They're not hungry. There is an alternative.

If there really is a problem with the quality of the lunches, producing fewer of them will lower costs and perhaps allow quality to improve further.

I must say, it seems odd that all the meals must be hot when all most kiwis pre-the Previous Labour government were raised on a lunch of cold sandwiches.

Hot meals were dinner only.

Anyway, to those frustrated by the media coverage of these stories this week, and there've been many of you, it seems like change is coming which should mean only those kids who are actually hungry will get fed by the state.

Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.