Children are malnourished, living off cereal and missing school “because their bellies are empty” as a worsening food insecurity crisis grips Western Australia’s most disadvantaged community, local leaders in the East Kimberley say.
Dilly Butters, a mother of five living in Halls Creek, said children were skipping meals every day because families could not afford to shop at the only supermarket. One steak could cost as much as $25, watermelon cost up to $20 and a dozen eggs sold for about $13, she said.
“You cannot survive in Halls Creek,” she said. “We just feel hopeless. We’re fighting a losing battle.”
The Halls Creek shire council wrote to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, last week, the day before the federal government released a national strategy to shore up food security in remote Australia, calling for “immediate and coordinated action from all levels of government” to address an “escalating food insecurity crisis” in the community.
Among its demands is funding to support the building of a community-owned grocery store. The shire president, Malcolm Edwards, said the council had spent four years trying to attract a business partner to design, build and run a store, with no success.
In his letter to Albanese, Edwards wrote that the shire only had 21 residential ratepayers and could not fund the construction of a store on its own. He asked the federal government to pay for its construction, in the hope that a community-controlled organisation could then take over operations.
“We are confident that with your support and collaborative effort, we can ensure that all residents of Halls Creek and its surrounding communities have access to affordable and nutritious food, fostering healthier and more resilient communities,” he wrote.
The chief executive of Halls Creek shire council, Susan Leonard, told Guardian Australia a store would “provide people with an opportunity to access different kinds of food and it would create more jobs”.
“In a community that has very high unemployment, it can be a catalyst for change,” she said.
A spokesperson for the National Indigenous Australians Agency told Guardian Australia it had not received an application for funding to build a community-run store in Halls Creek but was happy to meet with the shire.
They added that the 10-year remote Indigenous food security strategy “aims to make structural changes to the food system within remote communities nationally, including in the East Kimberley region”. The strategy includes setting up a governing body with federal, state and territory officials as well as community-controlled organisations, with the aim of improving supply chains, ensuring access to traditional foods and boosting local knowledge of health and nutrition.
It follows a pledge to spend $50m on subsidies to match the cost of 30 essential grocery items to city prices at about 150 remote stores, which are yet to be identified.
Half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households in remote Australia are not getting enough healthy food, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health survey found.
Peak Indigenous health bodies broadly welcomed the strategy.
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Leonard said the strategy was a “good start” but should go further.
“It’ll make a difference, but shouldn’t we be aiming higher?” she said. “We should never have a situation in Australia where people are not getting healthy meals at least three times a day.”
Halls Creek is the most disadvantaged community in WA, and is ranked among the bottom 1% of disadvantaged populations in Australia. The local unemployment rate is 24%.
There is one IGA supermarket to service a population of 4,000 in the town and seven surrounding communities.
Butters and her husband work full-time but still struggle to feed their household.
They regularly make an eight-hour round trip to Kununurra to shop in bulk, or buy “a whole cow” from nearby cattle stations, sharing the spoils with other families.
Butters said she knows families who are living on $200 a fortnight after rent and bills.
“They just don’t have the funds to cover the cost of living here,” she said. “A lot of them are living off cereal … and then just noodles and flour to make damper.”
Food supply is unstable in remote areas due to poor infrastructure, seasonal changes and the high costs of living and operating stores. During the last wet season roads to Kowanyama in Queensland’s far north were cut off for 25 weeks – forcing its food supplier to airlift essentials at a cost of $1.27m.
A lack of affordable and nutritious food often leads Indigenous residents to buy cheaper, unhealthy alternatives, contributing to disproportionate rates of malnutrition, anaemia, diabetes and kidney failure.
