If people can't afford to eat adequately in Australia we need to understand why. I think I could manage quite adequately, though without any frills, to live on the lowest of government allowances. I need to exclude exceptional cases where some medical or other cost swamps the budget, or where poor judgement has incurred huge repayment bills. But for people to live routinely with inadequate money for food, if that be the case as the authors assert, strikes me as unimaginable. We need to know more. Do more investigation. What are the circumstances that reduce people to living on less than adequate diet? The answers could be to increase benefits, or education, or budgeting skills, or what? So I would like the authors to do more inquiry and come up with some solutions.

"I think I could manage quite adequately, though without any frills, to live on the lowest of government allowances"

Newstart $212.15 per week, To rent a room in a shared house $150 plus expenses of about $40.

$22.50 per week left, you need a phone to look for jobs $10 a week. You need to get to the job network office and centrelink another $10 a week.(If you have public transport) $2.50 left.

Things you need to find a job, toothpaste, soap, hair cuts, clothes etc etc. about $30 per week. -$27.50 left.

-$4 left to to feed yourself a day.

Bread $2.50, Sausages $4.50 for 6, so a sausage sandwich for lunch leaves you -$6.50 a day. Breakfast, quick oats at about 50c a serve leaves you -$7.00 for dinner.

Even with no frills I am sure you get my point.

No car, no computer, no internet, no pay TV, no assets. No life.

The real point is not about welfare recipients it is about the working poor who are often worse off.

Finally - good on ya ruawake - moving out of the abstract and into the detail realities. Everyone is brave when it come to ideas and principles but try feeding yourself on Newstart- if you do not have a family willing to help out!

i am a single parent.
35 years old.
both my parents are deceased.
i live in government housing.
i have one child and will not have another unless i become married.
i am not an alcoholic a gambler or a drug addict.
in the past 6 years i have worked on a part-time basis.
i am currently unemployed.
i am in debt.
i own two pairs of shoes, sandals and sneakers.
for dinner tonight my child and i had canned spaghetti.
i often have to remind my child to not use too much bread, milk, cereal because when its gone, thats it.
i often go without meals. we do not eat enough red meat as i simply cannot afford it.
i would like to obtain a qualification in horticulture but cannot raise the $1000 - nor source funding for it.
i contemplate suicide. i know that things could always be worse but this is a source of fear, not comfort.
how much worse would it have to be before i break from the stress and pressure of trying to survive. my child and i are socially isolated because of our financial situation. what socio-economic bracket do i fit into?
to anyone who thinks that centrelink recipients are all taxpayer funded parasites i say - walk a mile in my shoes and even if you steal them because you think i owe you something i would still have 1 pair left.

There are few circumstances that wrench my heart more than the thought of children going hungry. Even so, it is instructive to stand near a supermarket checkout and note the precooked rubbish that many low income families buy when they do have money for food, and the corresponding dearth of fresh fruit and vegetables. Also, the tobacco booth is especially busy on pension day. At the risk of being accused of sententiousness, there is no viable substitute for bugeting, and prioritising fresh food which is in general cheaper than processed breakfast cereals, frozen pies, coke (in ever larger bottles) and potato crisps.

Critical to Australia's future is the need to take action and understand that there is a dire need to consider "New Indicators of Disadvantage".

We are a developed nation going backwards.

We are "invisible" statistics. Those which could otherwise help to problem solve.

This denial of the truth is disempowering local community, and will serverely contribute to problems we face in coming years as the baby boomers draw on "basic" needs in numbers never experienced by our system before.

How will we, as a nation of Aussie innovators cope?

For this reason I am about to reveal my own circumstance. It is humiliating. As a proud and highly capable woman, with others, I wish to expose how this situation can deprive one of esteem, health, and or effectiveness.

It is a window into welfare and how the treatment can disable and seriously pacify whole sections of our community where mutual obligation is abused by the whole of governance administrations involved.

Like others, my own case study reaffirms how people on a low wage minimum wage, on welfare and or disability have NO rights.

This is because we don't have the legal council necessary to protect ourselves from adversities.

We cannot protect our rights because we appear to have have none.

This is to show how many of us suffer under a the present system, inside a Western developed country.

a) The welfare laws (about a dozen Acts of Parliament) have been set up for us, accept we can't access them as we can't afford the costs of legal council.

b) Even the Tenancy Rights Acts are unaccessible to the impoverished especially when dealing with slum landlords. (See 25 issues in Mental Health)

The Welfare, Disability, Worker's Compensation Acts are unaccessible due to lack of legal council.

The Victim's Rights and Human Rights clauses inside policies are inaccessible due to lack of their legal inclusiveness

These stories are under-reported because of fear, stigma and public misunderstanding.

Worse is the run around the victim gets, especially when dealing with several government departments all at once.

See Below;