Overcome by tears with no food to buy

A Warragul woman walked out of Woolworths last week in tears.

After stretching her last grocery shop to her next Centrelink payment, Nicole Lambert was faced with empty shelves and no food to take home.

“People with money need to realise that some of us don’t have money to buy food in bulk,” she said.

Nicole is on a disability pension and receives her Centrelink payments fortnightly.

In the previous fortnight, Nicole said she could not afford food shopping because she had to pay for carpet steam cleaning so she wouldn’t lose her housing.

“I have not done food shopping in four weeks and I used up all the nitty gritty in the cupboard over the past two weeks. I have no food left,” she said.

On Wednesday she received her Centrelink payment. As she always does, she caught the bus to the supermarket to do some shopping.

But it was a familiar scene, the shelves were bare.

There were about 10 longlife milk cartons on the shelf. Nicole tried to buy four because she uses four each fortnight. Store policy restricted her to just two.

It was the same with frozen vegetables. With no meat available, Nicole thought she could at least stock up on frozen vegetables – but it was a two-bag policy.

“This is not good for people that are on Centrelink who only get paid fortnightly and have to do shopping every two weeks.

“You can't buy enough to last the fortnight. I walked out of Woolworths crying.

“I calmed myself and went to Coles. Zero meat on the shelves. I have no meat at home. I have no food. The poor are suffering.

“People say go to the butchers but I don’t have the money to do that. We are having to buy stuff that is more expensive because cheaper options aren’t available.

“When I finally got paid there was nothing there for me to buy.

“Other people go from shop to shop to get what they want but I don’t have a car so I can’t take my Woollies groceries into Coles to do more shopping.

“There’s people with no food right now,” she said.

Nicole said the situation was worsened on Thursday when the government announced restrictions on Ventolin. As an asthmatic, she can now buy only one Ventolin and she had to travel by train out of town to purchase it.