Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Community food relief

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:48): (1144) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Carers and Volunteers. The action I seek is for the minister to commit additional funding directly to rural and regional food shares to enable them to source chilled products. Foodshare and similar food relief organisations provide an incredibly valuable service to Victorians. They distribute food that might otherwise go to waste to families facing financial distress, where mum and dad or even the kids might be skipping meals because there is not enough money left at the end of the week. We are lucky to live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and no child in Victoria should ever be going to bed on an empty stomach. However, the Victorian Council of Social Service’s poverty maps show that food insecurity is particularly bad in regional Victoria, where over 80 per cent of rural and regional local government areas have poverty rates above 10 per cent.

When families find that the cupboard is bare, they need to be able to seek food relief from places like their local food share, and it is crucial that such vital services are supported by government funding. So you can imagine how disappointed I was to hear from Moira FoodShare, who have outlets in Cobram and Yarrawonga, that they had received a letter from Foodbank saying the state Labor government has ceased the chilled funding allocation for the regional delivery of chilled products, effective June 2024. This means that Foodbank will no longer deliver critical food like milk, yoghurt, cheese, fresh juice and other chilled products to regional food shares.

We know that dairy is an important source of calcium and a crucial part of a child’s diet. It is desperately needed at food shares. Families who face financial distress will often cut more expensive grocery items like dairy first. It is therefore very important that food relief services are able to meet this nutritional need in a child’s diet by supplying chilled dairy products like milk and yoghurt. But due to the state government’s funding cut, food shares in regional Victoria will no longer be supplied with the chilled products that they used to get and will now struggle to make dairy foods available to the children and families they assist. Moira FoodShare have tried to source chilled products directly from local food processors, only to be told that all food seconds are given directly to Foodbank, who will now only distribute these in Melbourne. Northern Victoria is the food bowl of our state and our nation, and yet food shares in rural towns are unable to get their hands on food rescued from local producers. I therefore urge the minister to make funds directly available to regional food shares to cover the cost of collecting, storing and transporting chilled food that needs to be kept cold.