Another rate rise could be on the cards with inflation climbing to 6.8 per cent as electricity, housing, food, coffee and fuel all drive costs up.
For Sydney community cafe owner and mum-of-seven, Kirsty Parkes, she has seen first hand what the ongoing rate rises are doing to the people in her community with families lining up for hours just to get a hot meal.
The Reserve Bank of Australia said the ongoing rate rises should get inflation under control, but with another meeting in less than a week to discuss another rate rise, that seems a far off reality for the people Kirsty serves.
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“It is having quite a devastating impact, to be honest,” she told Today.
“People can’t afford the basic necessities of life anymore and they are coming in here every single day.”
Kirsty’s cafe, located in Sadleir in Sydney’s southwest, relies on donations to give people meals and other staples they can’t afford.
But she said there are now about 200 people accessing the service each day and they are running out of resources.
“There’s lot of people and we are running desperately short of food” she said.
“One particular lady lined up for two hours for a loaf of bread, you can go up the road and buy that for a few dollars, but she didn’t have the few dollars, she had the two hours to stand here to wait and get it.
“That pretty much tells the story of how life is here at the moment.”
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Kirsty said she’d invite the RBA and the government to come and listen to the stories she hears from people in her community who are struggling.
“If I was to sit and actually take on board everything that everybody said when they came through the door I would be rocking in the corner – it is really bad,” she said.
“Come and see what is going on, we are a first world country and we have the capacity to do better so we really need to re-evaluate this.”
See what else Kirsty had to say in the video above
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