The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) yesterday launched a campaign to crowdfund $100,000 for a “food justice truck” delivering discounted food to people living on as little as $3 a day and prohibited from seeking work.
The ASRC’s director of aid, Patrick Lawrence, said the truck would deliver food to people living on up to 89 per cent of Australia’s lowest dole payment and even some “getting nothing”.
“There are 10,000 asylum seekers living in the community in Melbourne alone and none of them get the [full] Newstart allowance,” Mr Lawrence said. “Some of them get a percentage of Newstart, some of them get nothing, some of them have work rights, some of them don’t have work rights – and their food security situation is extremely dire.”
He said the food justice truck would visit several locations in Melbourne’s west, selling fresh fruit and vegetables, whole foods, non-perishables and other healthy items.
Mr Lawrence said food would be sold to the general public at market rates and to up to 2000 asylum seekers at a 75 per cent discount.
“So that $10 or $20 that an asylum seeker might have will actually buy them $40-$80 worth of food,” he said.
“We can’t afford to just give food away to 2000 people so we’ve got this hybrid social-enterprise model. It will only have one paid full-time staff manager and 60 volunteers. Obviously, we won’t have a profit margin; there are no shareholders, it’s a not-for-profit organisation.”
He said other organisations and private individuals had lined up to help “right some of the wrongs” against asylum seekers.
“[But] fundamentally, there’s only one institution that really can right the wrongs and that’s the federal government – whichever federal government it might be at the time that they finally decide that they’re going to change direction on this issue. In the meantime, particularly here in Melbourne, there’s a lot we can do for asylum seekers living in the community.”
The ASRC is returning to 214 Nicholson Street in Footscray – “the suburb of its birth” – and will run the truck from Maribyrnong.
