u/Moonfrog

The document said the lunches would continue to cover 244,400 students in the 1014 schools already included. Lunches would be $5 a meal, and $6.50 for students in years 9 to 13.

The lunches would be made in school kitchens, by iwi and hapū partners or by local caterers.

Labour's fiscal plan, released last week, said it would continue to fund the existing programme at $146.2 million for the 2027/28 fiscal year, $295.4m for 2028/29, and then $149.2m in 2029/30.

The cost of living policy plan also included a commitment to restore rural school bus routes.

Labour said if it could not restore a cancelled route, then it would work with rural communities and local councils to find an alternative.

A new post to share after the previous one had to be canned. Thank you for reporting it and the user.

Personally, I'm really interested in Te Tiriti policies. Overall, the usual ones of the economy, the health system, and work.

Opportunity party leader Qiulae Wong says New Zealand needs to rebuild its relationship with Māori, promising to restore changes to marine and coastal area law and repeal legislation that has stripped references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

In an interview with Mata with Mihingarangi, Wong said Opportunity regarded Te Tiriti as the foundation of the relationship between Māori and the Crown.

She said the Crown's responsibility went beyond simply honouring Te Tiriti and should include educating New Zealanders about the relationship and why it mattered to the country as a whole.

Opportunity is promising to restore the Marine and Coastal Area Act settings that existed before the 2025 changes made by the current coalition government.

Wong said her party would also work through legislation "statute by statute" to restore references to Te Tiriti that had been removed.

Labour is promising to require retirement villages to pay out within three months when a resident leaves, within 100 days if elected.

The party's spokesperson for seniors Ingrid Leary has had a member's bill in the ballot aiming to do just that since May last year, but it has not been drawn.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the party would make enacting it a priority.

"Retirement should be a time of security, not uncertainty. Seniors and their families have waited for fairness long enough, and that's why we'll introduce this Bill in our first 100 days," he said.

Leary said no one should be waiting up to a year to get their own money back.

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I like this and agree it should be done. Retirement villages sit on the payments for months at a time. It's cruel behavior.

The Opportunity Party's land tax proposal could cut house values by at least 10 percent, economists say.

The party is proposing a 1.75 percent annual land tax, which drops to 0.5 percent on rural land.

This will pay for a weekly "citizen's income" payment to most adults of $370, with top-up support for pensioners and some parents.

Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold said there would be an impact on house prices.

"There's a paper we wrote back in 2018 that examined the implications of a land tax and in that scenario a 1 percent land tax imposed on house prices we modelled would reduce house prices by 9.5 percent."

He said that was the change in the fair value of housing and it did not necessarily reflect what house prices would do.