I’m still getting over the Prime Minister saying if people don't like the food provided by the school lunch programme, they should make a marmite sandwich.  

And quite rightly, his comments are being described by the principal of a school in Kaiapoi as “absolutely disgraceful”. And I couldn’t agree more.  

Jason Miles is the principal of Kaiapoi North School and he’s bang on – that talk from the PM was disgraceful.  

And he says it just shows that Christopher Luxon has had a gutsful of the school lunches thing. He says: "He (the PM) is out of touch with the current inequities that didn't exist in his time."  

Jason Miles is saying what we all know – that kids can’t learn when they're hungry because they are easily distracted, and they get restless.   

He says: “A healthy, nutritious, tasty lunch could be the only substantial meal that child gets for the whole day and a marmite sandwich and an apple is probably ok some days, but we want to know we are going to get a consistently, healthy nutritious meal for our children so they can learn."  

And that’s the point here. We can bang on all we like about us going to school when we were kids with just a marmite sandwich - maybe a bit fancy on it some days with a piece of lettuce as well. Or sandwiches with luncheon in them.  

And yes, we did just fine. Just like Christopher Luxon did. But here’s the difference - we went to school in the morning with some breakfast in our belly and we went home at night to an evening meal.  

But that seems to be lost on the Prime Minister. Which is why this principal from Kaiapoi North School is saying today that Christopher Luxon’s appalling comments show just how out of touch he is.  

Last night, this thing came through on my social media feed and it was a video the “How to Dad” guy, Jordan Watson was fronting. It was promoting KidsCan and he was reading letters that teachers had sent-in talking about poverty in their schools.  

One of them talked about two siblings at the school and how each of them only turned up every second day, and the teacher got a bit sick of that and went to have a word with one of them. And the kid explained that they had to share shoes, and it was his turn to wear the shoes that day and that’s why he was at school and his sibling wasn’t.  

That’s the world that people like this Kaiapoi North School principal knows about. And I know the Prime Minister will say he knows about it too, but I don't think he does.  

He’s out of touch.  

Maybe he hasn’t heard what happened at that school in Murchison last week. The lunches arrived and they were so hot that the plastic had melted, and it wasn’t until the kids had been eating for a bit that they realised they'd been eating plastic.  

How can he tell those kids to eat a marmite sandwich if they don't like it?  

No wonder Education Minister Erica Stanford wants and explanation from Associate Minister David Seymour.  

She must have had her head in her hands when she heard the boss banging on about marmite sandwiches on Newstalk ZB yesterday morning and then coming out with the same nonsense in parliament. 

It was disgraceful and shows that, when it comes down to it, the PM has no idea what life is really like for some kids in our country. 

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