One in five Tasmanians is facing food insecurity every day, prompting Labor to announce a funding commitment to the state’s largest emergency food relief provider.
Leader Dean Winter has pledged that a Labor government would deliver $5.5 million over five years to Loaves and Fishes to help tackle rising food insecurity across Tasmania.
The package includes $5 million in operational funding, plus a $500,000 capital injection to develop new kitchen facilities in Devonport.
“When people can’t access nutritious food, the pressure doesn’t stop at the kitchen table,” Winter said. “It flows through to hospitals, schools and community services.”
Winter said the funding would allow the organisation to expand its school lunch program to an extra 15 schools.
Right now, Loaves and Fishes supports around 16,000 vulnerable Tasmanians each week through a network of more than 250 community organisations statewide.
“The demand is fairly consistent across the board. The estimation, as we know from a lot of data, is one in five Tasmanians are facing food insecurity every single day,” Loaves and Fishes CEO Andrew Hillier said.
“Many of those are not even accessing traditional food relief services.”
Hillier said the commitment would provide much-needed certainty for both his organisation and the hundreds of community groups it supports.
“This will help us do that consistently. And not only help us, it will help many other community organisations, over 250 that we support across Tasmania,” he said.
