Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to pay tribute to the work of the wonderful team at Feed The Little Children in Broome. At the end of last month I had the privilege of joining the team in their work. Broome is by no means the most remote part of Western Australia, but it is indeed very far removed from the more abundant community resources that you might find in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne or indeed Perth. But many of the families and children in Broome, despite their best efforts, suffer from extreme food insecurity, like many other communities in remote Western Australia and Queensland, and I'm sure Senator McCarthy also finds this in the Northern Territory. Food insecurity is a problem in our communities that we can, must and should address. And we can do these things by partnering with organisations such as Foodbank and Feed The Little Children, which is a local community initiative in Broome.

In April, Foodbank released their report into food insecurity in Australia. It was called Rumbling tummies. Frankly, it's quite a confronting and upsetting report to read. Unfortunately in our nation, despite what you might think about homelessness et cetera, in 2018 it is more likely that a child will go hungry than an adult. In the 12 months to April, 21 per cent of Australian households with children under the age of 15 had experienced food insecurity, with more than one in five children in this country living in food-insecure households. These are exactly the kinds of households that Feed The Little Children in Broome is trying to reach.

This figure is higher for families outside capital cities, with 25 per cent of households recorded as being food insecure. And for First Nations' families, 58 per cent of them have identified they experienced food insecurity at least once over a 12-month period. In these households, 18 per cent of children go to school without eating breakfast, 15 per cent go to school without any lunch and 11 per cent go to bed without dinner. This is simply not okay in our nation. Low income and poverty are the main drivers behind food insecurity, but of course there are also elements in some households, such as alcohol and drug use and general chaos and disruption, that make things difficult to put food on the table for children—especially when you're in a low-income household.

When I visited the Kimberley this month, I saw it's a combination of low incomes, poverty and high prices for food and other basic living essentials that are contributing to significant problems for these families. So tonight I want to thank Feed The Little Children and their fantastic team. In particular, I want to pay tribute to Clint and Deb Durham. Clint in particular has a background as a crime analyst for the Western Australia Police Force. His examination of crime statistics revealed a clear but disturbing pattern: very young children were committing property crimes, in Broome because of hunger.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to Malcolm and Valerie Jarvie, Graham Varischetti, Honey Dimascia, Jenny Costigan, Padmini Baker, Ted Wilkinson and Christina Scott, with a special shout-out to the chef and coordinator, Michael Khan. The work you do on Friday and Saturday nights is helping your community's most vulnerable families, and I'm pleased to recognise your work in this place. You do a great deal of work to alleviate household food insecurity for these highly vulnerable children, and you build trusted relationships with these families. I also want to say you've brought down crime in Broome because, frankly, children are getting a decent meal on Friday and Saturday nights. You're doing great work teaching cookery, nutrition and food hygiene as part of your capability building in the local community.

Tonight I call on the government and all members of this place to do more to reduce the number of Australian families that live in food-insecure homes and to support great projects like Feed The Little Children in Broome.