We can cut the cost of living and make food affordable for everyone. But it will require direct government intervention and community pressure to make it happen
BY SAM HIBBINS
Victorian MP for Prahran
There is an economic crisis being played out in homes, supermarkets, bank accounts and emergency relief services across the world.
Skyrocketing prices on food, increased rents and bills mean people simply can’t afford life essentials.
At the same time, greedy corporations like the supermarket duopoly are making record profits. Coles and Woolworths made a combined $2.7 billion combined profit this financial year alone.
To better understand the effect the crisis is having, the Victorian Greens asked people directly about how it was impacting them. The responses were numerous and rapid. It was clear people needed to share their story.
And the stories people did share painted a devastating picture, of hardship, of impossible choices between paying for food and paying the rent, of constant stress and anxiety, of reduced quality of life.
We had thousands of responses from across the state like:
“I was struggling before the cost of living increased. Now it's near impossible to feed the family and pay the rent”
“I’m constantly going between Coles, Woolies and Aldi to find the cheapest food items, and even then, I can only really afford 2 meals a day.”
“I have developed anxiety & depression as a result of worrying about paying bills”
“I’ve had to resort to no longer having breakfast..or just having toast for dinner”
“My mental health has been quite poor, feelings of isolation and embarrassment. I can’t afford basic food groups, basically only eating vegetables and rice or pasta”
Responses like this were as common as they are heartbreaking.
At the same time people are taking to social media to share their outrage at the supermarkets’ price hikes on basic foodstuffs like cheese, and lampoon Coles’ ‘Feed your family of four for $10 campaign’ from just 6 years ago.
Another common theme in people’s responses to our cost of living survey, was anger and frustration at the deep unfairness of corporations like the supermarket duopoly profiteering and making the cost of living crisis worse - and the desperate need for direct government intervention to stop unfair price hikes. People want the government to take action. And they want them to do it urgently.
“People are dying on the streets while corporations are reporting record profits. Get it together for everyone’s sake, we’re starving and freezing and homeless and it’s just getting worse”
“We need to freeze the cost of basics such as gas, electricity, food and fuel. If these keep rising we will see even more people below the poverty line.”
“Stop forcing people to live in poverty. Call out the supermarkets who are taking advantage of people in crisis”
“It's disgraceful that the government is leaving people in this level of poverty when they could change all of this.”
“They need to do something; to act now!”
Whilst the government stepping in with caps on rents, controls on food prices, and freezing bills may be seen by many as an anathema to economic orthodoxy, these are not new ideas and there was a time when governments were prepared to stand up to profiteering corporations.
Today our governments are stuck in a neo-liberal economic straight jacket. Unable even to consider what past governments, and even current governments internationally are doing to protect people from greedy price hikes.
When pushed in parliament to finally do something to stop corporations like Coles and Woolworths from price gouging - so that people can afford to put food on their tables - the Victorian Labor Government has continued to deflect and shrug it off as not their responsibility.
This is despite a number of levers at the governments’ disposal to take on profiteering supermarkets to stop them from their unfair price hikes - including placing price controls on essential items like food.
So what now, for the Victorian Greens’ fight to cut the cost of living and take on the supermarket duopoly? It’s about bringing people together to demand change, it’s about sharing peoples stories so the impact is not not forgotten and they can’t be ignored, it’s about letting people know that governments can take action, and letting governments know we won’t stand for inaction.
You can add your name to the petition to tell Labor to support the inquiry and stop the greedy supermarket duopoly from ripping people off.