TRANSCRIPT
In 2025, one in four children at schools supported by school lunch charity - Eat Up Australia - are accessing free school lunches.
In 2022, one in five students used the service.
And this jump represents a major issue: a growing number of Australian households are dealing with food insecurity.
Founder of Eat Up Australia, Lyndon Galea, says the cost of rent, utilities and interest rates have had a big impact on families.
"We often hear a lot of these families the parents are skipping meals before it ever gets to the stage where the kids are missing out. But sadly more kids than we've ever seen before are arriving at school without any food from home or with a very small amount of food, we're needing to support that."
More than three quarters of participating schools have reported a rise in the number of students accessing free lunches.
Mr Galea also says when children don't have enough to eat, there can be a significant negative impact on their academic performance.
"Teachers actually explain this best in really simple terms. They say when kids are hungry they can't concentrate and when a kid can't concentrate it is nearly impossible for them to learn."
Foodbank’s School Breakfast 4 Health program has seen as a similar rise in demand.
In the past two years, the service has grown by a third - supporting children in 676 schools.
This month, the New South Wales government funded an additional 88,000 public school students' free breakfasts, as part of its 8 million-dollar support for Foodbank New South Wales and ACT.
At the time, the charity's chief executive, John Robertson, told media the investment would change lives.
"To increase this program to 1000 schools across the state is a phenomenal commitment and is going to transform lives. For too long, we've heard politicians of all persuasions talk about the fact education is a key to a child turning around their lives. If they can't take advantage of that opportunity, they are being failed."
The Salvation Army supplies around 240,000 community meals to people in need, each year, with research from 2024 revealing three point three million Australians live below the poverty line and 47 per cent are forced to choose between paying for their rent, mortgage or food.
Major Gary Masters from the Salvation Army says the data also shows those who lived in poverty as children are also more than three times as likely to be financially insecure as adults.
"After essentials in housing, people have 8 dollars per week to live on. How can anyone live on 8 dollars per week, when you think about medical expenses and all the other things that come along with it."
This week, the organisation released its Social Justice Stocktake.
The survey was conducted late last year, with the Stocktake revealing Australians' top three concerns are housing insecurity, mental health and financial hardship.
Mr Masters says the growing crisis is a failure of policy, not individuals.
"Our social security net is failing people. The commonwealth government needs to review and radically increase the rates of income support such as JobSeeker and Youth Allowance so that unemployment does not mean longterm poverty."
