Australian foodbanks see increase in families seeking food aid

ABC NEWS (Australia)

One in five Australian households is suffering severe food insecurity according to Foodbanks latest annual hunger report. It shows, average Australian families increasingly faced with difficult decisions at the grocery shop and even going without food.

Transcript

00:00Preparing to feed the homeless, this Darwin resident's own food security is on her mind.

00:08Since a recent injury, she's had no choice but to get her groceries delivered and every dollar counts.

00:15I have this strict budget while I'm not working of how much money I can spend on food each week and that doesn't change.

00:22So when they put up their delivery from $10 to $18, I just had to choose $8 less groceries.

00:30And she's not alone, with more people visiting her soup kitchen than ever before.

00:35When we used to mostly see desperately poor looking homeless people, now we're getting families and people that you wouldn't expect.

00:473.5 million households around Australia are now struggling to feed themselves, according to Foodbank's 2025 Hunger Report,

00:56which also reveals almost half of all renters have experienced food insecurity this past year,

01:02as have one in five households earning over $91,000 a year.

01:08The charity says 20% of Australian households have either skipped meals or gone full days without eating.

01:16In the year 2024 to 2025.

01:19That's a 1% increase on last year.

01:22And a sign, Foodbank says, that hunger is becoming mainstream.

01:27When cost of living spikes the way it has, every demographic suffers.

01:31There's rent increases and that kind of thing and all these pressures put pressures on families

01:35and then unfortunately they do end up needing help and that's where we come in as a Foodbank.

01:40They're calling on the federal government to introduce a tax incentive to encourage the donation of food

01:46that would otherwise be thrown away.

01:48What the data this year tells us is really concerningly the cost of living relief measures

01:52that the federal government tried to provide in the last term of parliament

01:56didn't affect what people were putting on the table.

01:59An increasingly hungry nation hoping the government steps up to the plate.

02:04The soleus has not been restricted to the federal government to manage economic costs.

02:07And the federal government has not yet to do any忙able things.

02:12In fact, the federal government has been forced to pay attention to the federal government's

02:18budget to select the federal government and the federal government.

02:20In fact, the federal government has an environmental change on credit.

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