REVEALED: School Lunch Bureaucracy Racks Up $129k In Travel And Little In Outcomes

The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that the Ministry of Education run Healthy School Lunches programme has 37 full-time Ministry staff, despite lunch delivery being largely outsourced to external providers.

Documents released under the Official Information Act show an assortment of bureaucrats spent more than $129,754.90 on staff travel in one year, including $10,265.26 on three trips to the Chatham Islands and $17,676.95 on travel for the General Manager between Rotorua and Wellington.

Taxpayers' Union spokesman Austin Ellingham-Banks said:

"The Ministry outsourced the lunches but kept the bureaucracy."

"A private consortium makes and delivers the food, but we've revealed that 37 staff, including 22 advisors, 9 managers, and six figures in travel sit on top of it."

"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?"