Country Gal

I think your $2-3 for bacon veggie fritter is a bit low, I just checked at my local Woolies. I only added 10 cents for flour and milk, (but of course you can’t buy a bit of milk or flour). I limited the costs to one carrot and one zucchini.

Your fritter would cost about $3.50 and would result in an 85 gram “meal” each, for four.

The price of your fritter is about $10 a kilo. Of course if you could buy in bulk it would be much cheaper, but that is the problem.

May I suggest rice at about $1.30 a kilo as a staple food, Chicken at about $4.70 a kilo, frozen veg at about $3.75 a kilo. (no frills of course)

Bacon at $11 a kilo or more is just not an option.

This is reality for too many.

Thank you Ruawake for responding to my queries with very concrete information about the difficulties of living on a Newstart allowance of 212.50 a week. I had no idea that to rent a room in a shared house, plus expenses, would absorb 190.00 or so of this amount - leaving precious little to survive on. When I migrated to Oz, circa 1953, accommodation in Sydney was as scarce as hen's teeth. But, for 3 pounds a week, from my nett of tax 12 pounds a week of basic wage plus a bit for effort, I was actually able to save money for an eventual stake in real estate. I spent merely 25% of my income on accommodation, albeit very basic, just one very small room and shared shower and cooking room with a half dozen others. A major problem seems to be with the cost of accommodation. Why is this so?

What's this bickering on about cents and dimes doing here?

SOME PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT. Did you hear?

I can repeat, if you want:

SOME PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT.

Doesn't matter why this is happening, the fact that it's happening should horrify us all.
And Leigh, please, get real: a hungry human being is a hungry human being, in Australia or in Africa. The difference is: here in Australia a great proportion of us is dying of over consumption. Yet we see nothing wrong in letting our immediate neighbours go hungry.
Shame on all of us.

Equally shameful is our readiness to accept that anyone should depend on charity to survive. With a booming economy and record budget supluses, how can we tolerate that some of us need to beg for survival? It's a scandal.

Irrespective of the circumstances that led these people to being in need, there's enough money in this country to give everyone their dignity (not to mention their purchasing power, so precious to our own wealth!).

We are all human beings, and we might all be hungry one day.

Citizen K, we are simply pointing out how cheap food can be.

Runawake, yes you obviously cant buy 1 cup flour, I am assuming that you could buy a kilo for around $1 (no frills of course), which puts the cup at about $0.25. Bacon - dont buy prechopped stuff, buy when on special - about $8/kilo. Look, I make these things myself every couple of weeks.

Common mentioned canned spaghetti for dinner - wouldnt cheap fresh spaghetti be cheaper? Stir through some chopped tomato and a bit of shredded chicken. Another cheap meal. Rice is a good filling base - lucky we grow it so well in Australia!

Mothers, use cloth nappies on your babies. I did until my toddler was 14 months (and I was working at the time, so imagine the washing load with that). Water and napisan are much cheaper than buying disposables (even the cheap onse).

There are lots of little ways to get by.

An old lady (93) that I did a tax return for a couple of years ago was quite surprised to find that her income for the year was about $13500. Her response? "Goodness me that's a lot of money, I dont know where it all goes to".

Dear common
I am glad to hear that big words don't frighten or confuse you - even so you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick as far as my remarks are concerned. I have not said, nor do I believe, that people on welfare are intellectually inferior to those who are not on welfare, nor have I said or implied that welfare recipients spend all their money on junk food, alcohol, and tobacco, although I would state that many people do across all sections of the community, welfare recipients included. As to my (alleged) claims as to the spending habits of many welfare recipients, I suggest that you do as I did, and simply observe supermarket activity.
As a further point, I am an age pensioner, and during my working life was a welfare recipient for three seperate periods - re-entering the full time workforce on two occasions, each time after achieving mature age status.
I sympathise with your stated position - however may I suggest that you put aside the 'poor me' mind-set and come up with a plan to exricate yourself from the poverty trap that you seem to wallow in - perhaps you should consult some 'users of big words' who have been trained to help and are available to assist.

Two years ago my family and I learned the hard way about our social 'security' system

Four years ago, my husband and I decided to improve our earning capacities by doing part time study while working. We had had a succesful small business before that, which went belly up due to an onflow effect. I won't go into that now.

Then two years ago my husband had a serious accident.

We would be entitled to our wonderful welfare I hear you say?
No. First we had to use up our savings. We should have bought a plasma TV, gone on holidays which we had deprived ourselves of, gone to the pokies every week, anything but have savings.

After going back to zero, we had to fill out a confusing number of forms. I think they know everything about us except the number of knickers I own. For instance, we had to give an estimate what we could get for our household goods if we sold it.

I got another job working parttime. $17.50/hr 20hrs/wk. My husband still needed a lot of assistance. Financially we didn't improve from being on welfare. My husband then enquired about Austudy to retrain (he is physically disabled), we were informed we would go backwards.

I don't know where all the other bright sparks live who think that low income people all rush to the pub on pension day (maybe that is the only respite and fun that is remotedly affordable) or buy junk food (which is much cheaper than fresh fruit and vegetables).

Have any of you had to pay rent lately on a net income of $500/wk? Anybody paid rent for anything in a city for less than $280/wk? Then of course, you don't know how long you will be able to stay there. Do you know how much it costs to move? Hopefully you won't need to find new schools with different uniforms.

The left over money has to pay for EVERYTHING else. Is our story unique? No. Making ends meet is for many getting harder each year.