Wednesday, 13 May 2026

 Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (10:12): At the Laurimar Lakeside Community Market on Mother’s Day, watching people go past, it was amazing to see the most common thing that stood out, which is that so many people had bought a double punnet of raspberries. It is a bit of a luxury item at the best of times, but with cost-of-living pressures as they are, the chance to buy cheap raspberries was something that people could not resist. It really stuck out to me, and it made me think about when the Minister for Cost of Living came and held a community forum with me in my community. An older woman in my community spoke about the time that a friend of theirs had won a meat raffle and so came to their house and gave the family two steaks, and the family cut each steak in half so that each person could have a bit of steak.

People are doing it really tough and there is concern about the war in the Middle East and what that is going to do to fuel prices, so I am really proud that our government has 10 million litres of diesel in reserve for farmers. It is good for farmers but it is also good for food prices for all Victorian families, so that raspberries and steak can be something that people enjoy without considering them a luxury.