Victorian Food Security Strategy

Sustain

Overview

The Australian state of Victoria, in common with many other regions nationally and globally, is experiencing ‘failure demand’. This describes increased public spending to deal with crises generated by the so-called externalities of socioeconomic inequity, food and housing insecurity, and social isolation and despair. We are paying extraordinary sums (in Australia, estimated to exceed $500 bn per annum by 2060) to deal with the costs of an increasingly sick and unhappy population, caused by a deeply unfair economy.

We are calling for major reforms, including:

Legislating the human right to good food,
The participatory creation of a statewide food system and food security strategy,
The proper resourcing of that strategy through a Victorian food security fund
Making health and food security priority considerations in the Victorian Planning Provisions
Universal healthy school meals preferencing local farmers
Strict controls on marketing of fast and unhealthy food

Key actors

Legal and Social Issues Committee, Vic Parliament, Legislative Council
Environment and Planning Committee, Vic Parliament, Legislative Assembly
Victorian Government – Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Department of Transport and Planning
Federal Government – Department of Agriculture
Philanthropy – Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Paul Ramsay Foundation

Alignment with EAT-Lancet Commission

The creation of a Victorian Food System and Food Security Strategy would support the call by the EAT-Lancet Commission for a ‘radical transformation of the global food system’. Specifically, the calls to make health and food security priority considerations in land use planning decisions and to restrict the marketing of unhealthy and fast food would directly support Target 1 (Healthy Diets) and Strategy 1 (International and national commitment to shift to healthy diets).

Over 250 submissions were made to the two inquiries, the majority of which were in alignment with EAT-Lancet.

Lessons learned

Engaging with mechanism of the parliamentary inquiry can be a valuable tool to raise the profile of food security and food systems. It builds cross-party understandings and helps make the case for significant reforms by creating an open platform for stakeholders and members of the public to let politicians know the problems they face and the changes they want to see.

Next steps

Following the Victorian government’s response to the parliamentary inquiries, our next steps will be to advocate and mobilise to:

Ensure that there is a participatory and inclusive process to create the Victorian food system and food security strategy
Ensure that the Victorian government commits to regular and rigorous monitoring of levels of food security
Ensure that the human right to good food for all is incorporated into law
Ensure that the unhealthy, fast and ultra-processed food industries are increasingly delegitimised and treated as harmful industries, in the same way as tobacco and alcohol

For more information contact: Nick Rose at nick.rose@sustain.org.au

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