Tuesday, 30 May 2023

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:32): (257) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers and concerns the budget’s hidden cut to the regional food networks program. Initiatives like this are set up by ministers who milk positive publicity from generously distributing taxpayer cash, but when they come to be cut there is no accountability, no admission and no word of explanation or apology either to the service users or to those who work so hard in delivering to them. I am the last person to advocate unrestrained spending of public money, but the regional relief hubs show the effectiveness of a small team of paid staff harnessing a much larger team of volunteers. Two of the six hubs are in my electorate: Geelong Food Relief was receiving $250,000 and Warrnambool and District Food Share $100,000.

The service is hugely cost-effective: 685 volunteers collect, sort, store and distribute food across the hubs. The small paid staff recruit and organise their volunteer cohort and provide operational management, financial accounting and warehouse coordination. Remaining funding goes to power, rent, fuel and vehicle costs and bulk food purchase. With local management and volunteers, food distribution is efficient. Seventy-two per cent of the hub’s intake is sourced locally. Geelong Food Relief, for instance, does 26 pick-ups daily from local supermarkets and manufacturers, sorts the items and gets them directly to where they are most needed. To quote one of the local provider’s email:

Further, we are community hubs. A basic example from this morning: we had six participants from GenU and their carers arrive at the workplace, as they describe it. They have a sense of worth. The volunteers gain a sense of appreciation for those who are different. Our farmer is always happy, as the out-of-date bread is ready for the animals. This is community. None of this just happens. It takes safety processes, coordination, resources and funding. This is cost-effective, local spending supporting volunteers and enhancing communities.

The Geelong centre in turn provides 45 smaller agencies with 930 tonnes of free bulk nutritious food for cooking efficiently in volume and distributing locally. It also distributes directly to 15,000 families annually through its CBD mini-mart, which just the week before the budget extended its opening hours to cope with the growing demand. Shockingly, the cut to these services appears to affect only regional hubs. So, Minister, I ask you to allocate discretionary funding to allow these small, efficient community-driven enterprises to continue or alternatively to redistribute the available funding to reverse the unfair abolition of regional support while Melbourne programs remain.