Buyers' group boosts food quality in remote Australia
Updated
In outback Australia, food stores in remote, indigenous communities are in for a big overhaul.
State and Territory leaders have agreed to a new national licensing scheme to ensure remote stores sell healthy food. There are plenty of accounts of poor quality food being sold for high prices, but there are some examples of successful community stores.
Presenter: Bronwyn Herbert
Speakers: Damian McLean, Warburton's community development officer; Karen Mellott, WA Buying Power
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HERBET: Warburton is one of more than 1,200 remote indigenous communities across inland Australia.
Located halfway between Alice Springs and Kalgoorlie, it has struggled getting food to its people
MCLEAN: Out in Nangarra land, where Warburton is, there were no phones, there were no fax, everything done by radio in terms of ordering, and flying doctor telegraph skeds [scheduled calls] so it was very difficult to run a store this far out.
HERBET: Damian McLean is Warburton's community development officer.
MCLEAN: People were worried about food, any food, more than healthy food - it was as grim as that.
He says they've successfully turned around their troubles, by setting up a food co-operative with neighbouring communities.
MCLEAN: We agreed as a group that things were fairly strained and to survive we would do two things, if a flat freight rate thorugh each of the communities to even it out and the benefit would be we would have additional purchasing power operating as a cooperative. And from very modest beginings it developed into a sound business over time.
HERBET: However many other communities continue to battle getting affordable fresh food into their stores.
In response to widespread cases of poor nutrition, COAG [Council of Australian Governments] leaders have commissioned an indigenous food security strategy.
It includes a national licensing scheme to ensure remote stores sell nutrious goods.
But Damian McLean from Warburton isn't sure if that's the answer
MCLEAN: Look I've got to be honest and say I don't think a naitional licensing scheme would add anything to what we have been doing over the past 26 years. It may be applicable in some places where there circumstances are different, but I don't think a licence is going to get people to cooperate and make better decisions.
HERBET: Karen Mellott heads WA Buying Power, a company servicing sixteen remote communities across the Kimberley region.
She says to improve the situation, Government's would be better off subsidising freight costs,
MELLOTT: The community are having to pay three times as much for a a loaf of bread because they have got to pay the freight costs... We would like to see the government assist them with the freight costing, that would be possibly the best thing that could happen.
HERBET: Karen Mellott says there have already been problems with the prescriptive operations of the Government owned and funded 'Outback Stores' in the Northern Territory,
MELLOTT: They are going into the stores and basically demanding what they put into the stores, well these stores have been around a long time you can't just go in and say you can't have this or that because it's not healthy, there has got to be a happy medium somewhere.
HERBET: The indigenous food strategy is due at the end of this year.
