Queueing for food, sleeping in cars: at the coalface of Sydney’s cost of living crisis

When Kirsty Parkes opened her Community Café outreach service in August, about 20 or 30 people would rock up each day for free bread, produce, meat and pantry items.

Now, the food bank in Sadleir, near Liverpool, serves upwards of 150 people a day, four days a week. The record, set on Friday when the Herald visited, is now 232. For people doing it tough in this part of Sydney – and there are many – Parkes and her store are a godsend.

Kirsty Parkes, centre, serves visitors at her Community Cafe Outreach Service in Sadleir, along with her team of volunteers.Credit: James Brickwood

“Mental health is a massive issue at the moment. The rising cost of living has triggered so many people,” Parkes says as she readies the shelves before opening time on Friday. “We have seen the fallout here directly, it’s absolutely insane.

“So many people here already struggle with housing, already struggle with rent, already struggle with bills. How many of them are going to become homeless? One of our regulars is currently sleeping in his car, and I don’t know how to help him.”

This is the pointy end of Australia’s cost of living crisis, where the skyrocketing price of housing, power, food and fuel is smashing those who can least afford it, and changing the very makeup of the clientele on the breadline. While life has never been easy in postcode 2168, everyone standing in line for food on Friday attested: it has never been this hard.

One of Parkes’ customers is Mitchell Zannino, 22, who is on JobSeeker. After paying rent (he lives with his grandmother in adjacent Busby), he says he is left with just over $400 a fortnight. His dog, an American Pitbull, can be costly, and he makes excuses about why he can’t join his friends for dinner. He says he applied for five jobs and heard back about one.

Mitchell Zannino, 22, is on JobSeeker. “If you have a bill that pops up, everything goes out the window,” he says.Credit: James Brickwood

“It’s pretty hard,” Zannino says. “You’ve got to budget. And if you have a bill that pops up, everything goes out the window.”

While he takes it in good stride, Zannino is puzzled by speculation the government might increase JobSeeker for over-55s only. “Why aren’t you doing it to the younger generation?” he asks. “I guess they want the younger generation to look for work, [but] it’s easier to be said than be done.”

Casey Forbes, 32, lives with her partner in next door Miller. They are trying to feed seven children aged from 13 to five months. Forbes says the family’s weekly grocery bill has gone from about $350 to $600 in a couple of years. “It used to be five bucks for a box of chips, now you’re paying, like, ten dollars. It’s pathetic,” she says.

Forbes’ partner works but is on reduced hours following an accident; she receives the parenting payment, which varies depending on his income. “Places like this help me and my family out massively,” she says. “If it wasn’t for them, I’d probably be up shit creek.”

Casey Forbes is trying to feed seven young mouths using her husband’s salary and the parenting payment.Credit: James Brickwood

Parkes also has seven children, aged three to 27. She started the service during COVID lockdowns, doling out free bread at the end of her driveway. The stall was made from a bright yellow gazebo she won on Facebook and a few trestle tables her husband bought at Bunnings.

Later, she started a hot meal service at the local park, and then found a small permanent space in Sadleir next to the primary school, where Community Café will soon mark its first birthday. The service operates four days a week from 11am to 4pm – or when they run out of food.

The café’s stock is largely leftovers from nearby Woolworths supermarkets, or food rescuer Second Bite and Coles, or other donations. Local pasta makers Crostoli King chip in 50 meals a week. Each day, customers are entitled to a maximum of six pantry items, three fridge items, two drinks, two frozen meals and a meat pack, and unlimited bread.

Parkes will often start around 8am, picking up food from Woolworths or collecting it from one of her volunteer drivers, and preparing the café. She has about 18 volunteers all-up, and when the Herald visits on a Friday morning, 10 are hard at work getting ready to open the doors.

Ron Fletcher stocks the shelves before the morning rush. On a regular day the Community Cafe will receive about 75kg of leftover bread.Credit: James Brickwood

Ron Fletcher, a former Salvation Army worker who was bored in retirement, is moving 75 kilograms of bread from pallets on to the shelves. From what he can see, the cost of living fallout is becoming “very bad”.

“Things go up 6, 7, 8 per cent, pension goes up 2 per cent. Sooner or later, they just can’t afford it,” he says. “We’re getting new people every day. Soon it’s going to be too big.”

The queues are also getting longer for the Rev Bill Crews Foundation, which now runs four Loaves and Fishes restaurants dishing up 1600 free meals a day in Ashfield, Liverpool, Campbelltown and Lethbridge Park.

And the clientele has expanded well beyond the old core of rough sleepers to include people in social housing and on welfare, the working poor, children and mums escaping domestic violence. “We’ve more or less morphed from feeding the homeless to feeding the hungry,” Crews says.

On Friday, Community Cafe Outreach Service smashed its record, with 232 people coming through the doors.Credit: James Brickwood

Crews, who turns 80 next year, remains hopeful the federal government might do something meaningful to address poverty – such as lifting the Jobseeker payment – in Tuesday’s budget.

“Twenty-odd years ago I could make governments feel guilty by bringing out story after story. Nowadays, they fight back,” he says. “There’s a mantra the best form of welfare is a job, and that’s really true. But there’s no point starving people into going looking for work because most of them are looking for work anyway.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has repeatedly said the budget will help the most vulnerable with cost of living relief, but says the government can’t do everything it would like to do immediately, and he wants to avoid adding to inflation.

Chalmers has not confirmed reports the rate will be lifted for over-55s only, or, on Sunday, a report that he will raise JobSeeker by $40 a fortnight for all. Last month the government’s own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, chaired by former Labor minister Jenny Macklin, recommended a “substantial” increase in JobSeeker and other working age payments as the top priority.

Marilyn Martin and Rhonda Dempsey, from Mount Pritchard, are on the disability support pension and say they are living below the poverty line.Credit: James Brickwood

Kirsty Parkes, who recently gave evidence to a Senate inquiry on the cost of living, says Chalmers – and any politician – ought to pay a visit to her café in Sadleir.

“The only way I can describe it to people is to say: come out and have a look. Come and see what we’re doing,” she says. “There definitely needs to be some kind of action taken. If you’re not wanting to do one thing, then you have to come at it from a different angle.”

On Friday, following the Herald’s visit, Parkes ended up smashing her previous daily record of 195 visitors, with 232 people streaming through the doors.

It was a mammoth day for her team, and Parkes got home at 9pm. But she knows the numbers are only going to keep growing.

“I don’t really have aspirations to be anything other than helpful,” she says. “I want to leave the world better than I found it.”

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