Freight capacity boost to help with grocery costs on Christmas Island

ABC NEWS (Australia)

While inflation has led to significant increases to the cost of a basket of groceries, spare a thought for the residents of Christmas Island. Fresh food has to be flown to the remote territory because it's difficult to grow vegetables on the phosphate-rich island. But, an increase in freight capacity could help to bring down some of the sky high prices for fresh food.

Transcript

00:00The fortnightly fresh food delivery on Christmas Island is a big event.

00:07Flown in at a significant cost, some items sell at four times the mainland price.

00:13I don't even look at receipts anymore when I pay up.

00:17I paid $8.50 for an avocado, I paid $11 for a lettuce, which actually is quite cheap.

00:24And that's only if the freight arrives.

00:26Flights can't land sometimes because of weather. They do circle. It's one of the most difficult flights to do.

00:34They need to be able to turn around and land back on the mainland or divert to Jakarta.

00:40Passenger planes carry extra fuel for that reason, and sometimes there isn't enough room for luggage.

00:46It's just very annoying and disappointing and pretty bad for tourism.

00:51To increase freight and passenger capacity, the Federal Government has signed a five-year contract with Qantas.

00:57With the extra 5,000 passenger movements, I would expect that it bolsters our tourism.

01:05Qantas will take over the contract from Virgin in November, but after years of supply issues, locals aren't convinced it'll see services improve.

01:13The island we love, but sometimes it's really, really difficult to operate.

01:20And all of these things are beyond our control.

01:22A reality of life on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

01:26There's no rushes if you have to do it over a month.

01:27The island has still changed to a 101-year-old collaboration.

01:29If somebody is interested inud dies isn't a very nova-new Raditydon version.

01:31When you're interested in that, after you are having some of their special 같아요,

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