Greens Senator Steph Hodgins-May returns to her Ballarat roots today to listen to community concerns about the current cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTime and time again, I\u2019m hearing from people who can’t afford basic food items.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople are telling me that they\u2019re skipping meals and being forced to make tough choices between medical expenses, groceries and rent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the <\/u><\/a>Ballarat Foundation<\/a>,<\/a> more than 12 percent of the population in Ballarat relies on some kind of support for accessing meals and groceries in order to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis shouldn\u2019t be happening in a wealthy country like Australia, but that\u2019s the reality when Labor refuses to take action on cost of living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere in Ballarat, like in so many regional communities across the country, shoppers have little choice but to shop at either Coles and Woolworths.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Coles and Woolworths duopoly is blatantly price gouging. Shoppers are paying more for groceries, while supermarkets are profiting billions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaving grown up in Ballarat, I\u2019m hearing directly from locals who are fed up. People have had enough of the supermarket price-gouging, they\u2019ve had enough of not being able to put food on the table for their kids – all while supermarkets make huge profits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Greens are campaigning hard to hold Coles and Woolworths to account, the Senator said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFood and grocery prices won\u2019t come down unless we make price gouging illegal, and create powers to break up the supermarket duopoly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnly the Greens have consistently proposed measures in Parliament that will result in lower food and grocery prices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt’s time for the Labor Party to decide whether to protect the profits of supermarket giants or provide relief to Australian shoppers in a cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greens Senator Steph Hodgins-May returns to her Ballarat roots today to listen to community concerns about the current cost of living crisis. \u201cTime and time again, I\u2019m hearing from people who can’t afford basic food items.\u201d \u201cPeople are telling me that they\u2019re skipping meals and being forced to make tough choices between medical expenses, groceries … Continue reading “Greens Senator slams supermarket profits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28045,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28044\/revisions\/28045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}