Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is very gratifying to read the recommendations of this committee. In the Northern Territory we are unfortunately all too familiar with some of the horror stories around the availability and cost of food in our remote communities. Submissions to this committee are a stark reminder of the differences between our bush communities and the relative ease with which those in our capital cities, including where I live in Darwin, can obtain affordable, high-quality food. The Yothu Yindi Foundation says that the cost of food for remote communities in the NT is almost double that of the major cities. But we know that many people in those remote communities depend on the pension or Newstart or JobSeeker as their sole or main source of income. So they're paying twice as much on incomes that are barely more than half of what they actually need. In a typical three-bedroom home in a remote community there are often 15 to20 occupants. Securing food in that sort of an environment is just not possible. First Nations people in these communities face food insecurity levels at 10 times that of the general population.

There is no getting around the fact that the biggest obstacle to a healthy lifestyle for our remote Australians is money. Local stores that are well managed still have to deal with diseconomies of scale, limited purchasing power, inefficient logistics, high in-store cost per dollar in sales, high freight costs and low-income customers. That is a permanent problem that has been assuaged in recent times due to the coronavirus supplement. But, as we all know and fear, the snap back on the incomes of these Australians is going to make that permanent problem continue.

The pandemic didn't help. Some remote supermarket prices inflated due to the reduced supply lines which crunched these residents of remote and regional Northern Territory and Australia even further. We've heard reports of a single head of lettuce for $10, $8 for a sausage roll, $13 for a stick of celery, $42 a kilo for mince meat—not high quality meat; mince meat. I have heard of small chocolate cakes going in some communities for $90, 10 times what you would pay in a Darwin supermarket.

So I am very happy to see that the committee is recommending that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, is going to take a look at food and grocery prices in remote community stores. They're suggesting that the ACCC recommend ways to increase competition in remote areas and push food prices down, and look at making any necessary changes to consumer protection laws to prevent price gouging, which current laws simply do not address. Although the committee hasn't uncovered any overt price gouging that is going on, I think it's clear from the prices we're hearing that something is very wrong. A real-time price monitoring and disclosure mechanism across all remote community stores is a great idea.

I also really welcome the recommendation that the government invest in roads and infrastructure in the NT to make it easier and more efficient to get food to our remote communities. We hear a lot about the infrastructure spend of this government, but it's always well out on the never never, not actually happening on the ground, which needs to stop. There needs to be not just announcements; there needs to be follow through, bitumen put down, bridges built. We are forever calling for federal funding for our roads to actually appear, and this is one of the reasons why. No-one should be eating rotten or mouldy food, as has been reported, because the supply chains aren't good enough to get the food there fresh. Having wholesalers establish distribution centres closer to remote communities is a terrific proposal for the same reason, along with improving cold storage and dry storage.

We owe it to our remote populations to help them build in as much security and resilience as we can, so I support the recommendations to invest in local food production schemes like community gardens, fishing initiatives and mobile abattoirs.

I heard the member for Kennedy flapping his gums about community gardens when he was a minister or something, back in the day, and I'd just like to know what the member for Kennedy is actually doing about community gardens—actually doing—because I'll introduce him to the president of Community Gardens Australia, Naomi Lacey, who I met with recently. I'm working with her on getting some support for what is really a preventive health measure. Community gardens will help with food security, but they will also make sure that communities are healthier, through growing their own produce. So I commend Naomi Lacey for the work she is doing, and I'm right behind her. And I'll be introducing the member for Kennedy to her.

We want to be able to go into communities and see what's going on as local customers see it. That's why I welcome the national licensing and inspection scheme and the recommendation for removing the requirement to give advance notice of inspections. Officials should just be able to turn up in a community, without warning, so that they can see what people in these local communities are experiencing.

Developing reliable electricity for our remote communities' stores seems like a no-brainer as well, but supply can often be interrupted by storms and floods in the wet season. That's why it's so great that the Northern Territory is investing in large-scale solar. Our remote communities could be almost entirely powered by solar, which is a cheap and plentiful solution to what can often be painfully expensive power bills. I commend the Northern Territory government for the work that they're doing to roll out solar to the remote communities of the NT.

The committee has noted also that this is the third report of this type in the last decade or so. A report 11 years ago made many similar recommendations. So it is my sincere hope that this latest iteration doesn't just gather dust on a shelf. Our remote residents deserve a lot better, and the pandemic has shown us that we can't afford to waste any more time.

When you consider that the current federal government is into its eighth year now, it is simply unacceptable that we weren't prepared for the pandemic and that this issue hadn't been addressed a long time before now. So I encourage them to take these recommendations seriously, because our remote residents deserve a lot better.

As I said, the pandemic has shown us that we can't afford to waste any more time. I don't want—as I am sure you, Mr Deputy Speaker Gillespie, don't want, and my colleagues certainly don't want—to hear about skyrocketing prices, food shortages and a lack of supply in the communities. I don't want remote Australians fearing that they'll starve if there is another situation as we've experienced in the pandemic. In 2020, that just isn't good enough. We need to take action now, and I encourage the government to take these recommendations seriously, in the interests of improving food security, food availability, food quality and the price of food in remote places in our nation.

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