Larissa Behrendt:

Well, good evening everyone. It's so lovely to have you all here. My name's Larissa Behrendt. I'm the Chair of the National Library of Australia Council, and it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the 34th Kenneth Myer lecture. Now, we would have been starting tonight's proceedings with a welcome to country from Uncle Colin Hunter, but unfortunately he let us know that he's unwell and unable to be here. So in lieu of that, he sends his apologies, but I'd like to take a moment to reflect and acknowledge country, to pay respects to elders past and present, to take a moment during this reflective ceremony that we have of thinking about the tens of thousands of years that Aboriginal knowledge and story and wisdom have been on our country and think about how our role in the present and in the future might be shaped by the sharing of that country.

So a very special welcome to you all, as I've said. Particularly like to acknowledge Louise Myer and the Myer family and the Myer Foundation who are with us tonight. I'd also like to acknowledge my fellow National Library Council board member, Andrea Laing, and previous board members, Alice Wong and Nicholas Gruen, who are with us tonight as well. It's lovely to have you here too. I'd also like to acknowledge Alison Dellit, who was recently appointed and commenced as the new Director-General of the National Library of Australia. And you'll get to meet her at the end because she'll do the closing remarks. But we're delighted that you're all here for tonight's events. One of the things I love most about libraries is that they're places where ideas become action. They preserve our stories and our history, but they also inspire us to imagine a better future.

The Kenneth Myer lecture is one of the ways that the National Library fulfils this role, creating a space where important ideas can be shared, challenged, and debated. The Kenneth Myer lecture has become one of the National Library's most important public events. Since it began in 1990, it has brought Australians together to hear thoughtful, challenging, and inspiring ideas about the issues that shape our nation and our future. It is fitting that this lecture bears the name of Kenneth Baillieu Myer AC, whose contribution to Australia's cultural and civic life was extraordinary. A visionary philanthropist and businessman, Kenneth believed deeply in the value of public institutions and in creating opportunities for ideas to be shared widely. Through his own generosity, his leadership of the Sidney Myer Fund and Myer Foundation and his service on countless boards, he made an enduring contribution to Australian public life. His connection to the National Library was particularly significant.

Kenneth was a founding member of the National Library Council in 1961 and later served as Chair from 1974 until 1982. He was a passionate advocate for libraries and the role they play in preserving knowledge, encouraging curiosity, and strengthening our democracy. It was fitting that he was recognised with the Australian Library and Information Association's Redmond Barry Award for his outstanding contribution to libraries. The vision for this lecture series reflects Kenneth's own values. He imagined a platform where eminent Australians could share ideas that mattered deeply to them, and in doing so, encourage all of us to think differently about the world around us. Over more than three decades, that vision has been realised through an extraordinary lineup of speakers from Gough Whitlam to Jillian Broadbent, and most recently Professor Brett Sutton, who received such a warm welcome from his hometown audience. Each has challenged us, inspired us, and enriched our national conversation.

None of this would have been possible without the enduring support of the Myer family and since 2015, the Myer Foundation. We remain deeply grateful for their generosity and their longstanding commitment to fostering thoughtful public discussion. Tonight's lecturer is someone who embodies that same spirit of generosity and public purpose. Ronni Khan AO, is one of Australia's most admired social entrepreneurs. Through Oz Harvest, she has fundamentally changed the way we think about food waste, food security, and our responsibility to one another. What began as a simple but powerful idea to rescue good food that would otherwise go to waste and redirect it to people who need it has grown into a movement that has transformed communities across Australia. Ronni's work reminds us that some of society's greatest challenges are not problems of resources, but of imagination, leadership, and collective will. She has shown that practical action, optimism, and compassion can create profound social change.

It is little wonder that she has been recognised as an Officer of the Order of Australia and as Australia's local hero of the year. This evening, Ronni will invite us to consider a powerful question. How can hunger persist in a nation as prosperous as ours? In exploring that question, she will challenge us to think differently about service, reciprocity, responsibility, and what genuine care for one another looks like at scale. It is my great pleasure to welcome the 2026 Kenneth Myer lecturer, Ronni Khan AO, to the stage. Please join me in welcoming her.

Ronni Kahn:

Good evening, everybody. Honestly, it is an absolute honour and a privilege to be here tonight. And I too would like to acknowledge that my feet are on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my deep respects to the elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people. Well, you heard the question and the question is, how is it possible in this rich and abundant country, a wealthy nation like ours, that on a daily basis, I am going to share with you what I see. And in order to share with you what I see, and I will build on it a little bit so that I don't absolutely shock you in my first sentence with some of the stats that I'm going to share with you. But I'm going to share with you just a little bit of my journey so that you understand where I'm coming from, what I've seen, and why I have the data that I have.

So the first thing I want to share with you is that I never, ever intended to start a charity. It's not that as a little girl, I spent my day saying, 'One day I'm going to run an organisation.' Not at all. I completely and utterly stumbled into Oz Harvest. That was my gift, my blessing that I could not ever have anticipated. So I had a business. I was an event producer putting on beautiful events, either for corporates or for individuals, marking a unique moment in their lives. Now, there is one thing that is absolutely common to every one of those events that I held, and I'm a hundred percent sure that you will identify with that as well. The best way to celebrate and to show our guests, our friends, or the guests that my clients were inviting is with food. Food is about sharing.

Food is about caring. Food is about dignity and respect. So at every one of my events, the tables groaned. They groaned because I was representing a client who either wanted to show generosity, success, warmth, and I could not bear the thought that a single one of my guests at one of my events would have to go to Maccas on the way home. So the tables groaned and at every one of my events, there was surplus food. Now for years, I actually did nothing with that food. I gave it to the staff who worked. We gave it to whoever we could just around us. But many, many times we actually threw that food away until one event that I held for a thousand people in a unique venue. And I decided to turn that into a Roman banquet. I don't like people queuing for food. So I created 50 stalls and every stall was flowing with grapes, wheels of parmesan, magnificent quality food.

But I also had a similar amount of bars because we know that we love to celebrate and have some drinks. Well, my guests at that event went straight to the bars. They got pissed. And in half an hour, they were out and did not touch the food. Now I had thousands of kilos of food sitting there and there was no way that I could even begin to think of disposing it because it was just too good. And so at midnight, I loaded up a van in my fancy clothes thinking, now what am I going to do with this food? I knew of one organisation in Sydney, which is where this event took place, the Matthew Talbot Hostel for Men. Now, this is positioned right behind the Ferrari and the Porsche dealers on Williams Street. So the truth is, I'd never actually been there, but I figured I would go there and see what would happen.

I arrived at this venue and honestly, it was very confronting. All outside of the space, there were men of every different shape and size. Exactly the stereotype of what you would all imagine homeless men to look like. Got out of the van, knocked on the door and said, 'Would any of this food interest you?' Well, they nearly collapsed. They thought their Christmas had come in the middle of May, which it had for them. They helped offload the food and they loved it. But I have to tell you, I felt unbelievable, way more excited than feeding any of the people that would have eaten it at that event that night. And so in a way, that began my rogue food rescue life for a while. I would tell my clients, 'Don't you worry. We'll make, serve your guests and any leftovers, I will just take and share with people who need it most.' And my clients loved that.

And so did Matthew Talbot Hostel to the point that when I said, 'Could you share with me any other places?' Because 24 years ago, there wasn't a database of the charities that I could just look it up and go to. In fact, we created that, but that comes a little bit later. So at first they said 'no', because they thought they'd get less. I said, 'Don't you worry. There's plenty. We've got plenty to go around. I will make sure you get food. But if you can start telling me of any others.' And so that grew until I reached the point that I decided that I actually loved delivering food to vulnerable people way more than I loved draping ceilings, tying napkins with purple ribbons to match purple ribbons on chairs. And so I decided I would start an organisation. And that was really the genesis of Oz Harvest.

Now, the interesting thing when I started Oz Harvest, I thought I would just do it for a little while. I thought I would just do it until there was no more food left to rescue. I had no idea that food waste costs us $37.7 billion a year. I had no idea that a third of all food grown in this country, but globally, goes to waste. I had no idea that by starting Oz Harvest, I was not only starting a social organisation because I was feeding people. I was also starting an environmental organisation because I had no idea that every time we throw food into the bin, we cause global warming, because food decomposes in the earth much, much slower than if we put it into compost.

I actually will just ask a question because this is just out of curiosity for me. If you threw a lettuce into your garbage bin or put a lettuce into compost, how long do you think it would take for a lettuce to decompose in your bin, which then would go to landfill? Just any ideas? I just want to check that you're all still awake. Good. Any ideas? You don't have to be shy. You can throw out a number.

Audience member 1:

A month.

Ronni Kahn:

How long?

Audience member 1:

One month.

Ronni Kahn:

One month. Any other offers?

Audience member 2:

Three months [unclear]

Ronni Kahn:

Three months. One year. Well, I'll put you out of your misery. 25 years. Yeah. So now perhaps in your minds, there might be just a little bit of thought around how important it is to compost. Because of course food in landfill gives off methane, which is far more harmful than carbon dioxide, which is what causes global warming and climate change. And I think we're all very aware of climate change, particularly this winter. I don't know about you, but I'm from Sydney and we've been wearing t-shirts this winter. So we definitely can feel it, but I digress. The point is that when I started Oz Harvest, we had one van. We were rescuing food.

And at the time, again, numbers were a little rubbery. Maybe there were 50,000 people homeless in Australia. The statistics were really not very good. So here's where we start with the difficult stuff. We are now 22 years later in a country which again, I will repeat, is wealthy, generous, and abundant. So I'm going to give you some stats. I said to you that a third of all food goes to waste. Right? We just did our frontline report. I'm afraid I only have one copy, but there are many. It is online. So any of you can look at it and look it up. We did this on the 1st of April. We do it every year. And we surveyed 875 charities. I'm going to go back one second because I don't want to assume that every single one of you knows what we do. So very briefly, we rescue food from anywhere in the food supply chain.

So that's manufacturers, producers, hotels, delis, farmers. We rescue surplus food, food that is perfectly good for consumption. The food that when sometimes you go to a supermarket and you see milk and you put your hand at the back to take the milk that's got the longest date. So we might get the milk that's got the shortest date. Or when we go to the supermarket and we pick the most beautiful apples and not the ones with the freckles, we get the ones that might have a freckle. So we're talking about surplus food, not what's ever left on your plate.

Third, all goes to waste. It's costing households because most of you would think, oh, supermarkets, manufacturers, producers, it's not us. I'm here to share with you that half of all food waste comes from our homes. Now, I do know that there many of you in this audience who've kind of got my colour hair, which means that either your parents were in the depression or somebody, you know how valuable food is and how not to waste food. But that is not the case for all of us. And in fact, half of all food that goes to waste comes from us. So we'll talk about how we stop that. We will talk about that. But what I wanted to share with you, so we rescue that food and we deliver it to around between about 1,800 charities. For the first time in my 22 years, we have more charities on a wait list than we are delivering food to.

More charities on a wait list. The frontline report did our report on the 1st of April. The war broke out in Iran end of April. So we did another pulse survey in May because now fuel had gone up. And so there was an added pressure. So we call this a cost of surviving crisis, not a cost of living crisis. What the statistics tell us is that the charities that we deliver food to tell us, 70% of them say they need 50% more food to service the people that they come to. So we did the survey on 875 charities. They told us that they're turning away 75,000 people a month. Now we deliver 750,000 meals a month. That's the equivalent from the food that we rescue. That's what Oz Harvest does.

You starting to get a little bit of a feel around charities turning away 75,000 people a month. So that's on 875 charities. So if I'm to extrapolate that out to the 1,900 charities we service, we're looking at 150,000 people who are not able to get food cause we don't have enough resources. Remember I told you I started with one vehicle and I just shared with Louise a moment ago. People would see my van and say, 'I see your vans everywhere.' Well, now I hope you might see our vans cause we have 85 vans across the country, 13 here in Victoria. So those vans are rescuing food, but we cannot rescue enough. We'd need to treble our fleet in order to service those people.

What's also scary about these numbers is that there is a whole new demographic of need. 30% of the people that are coming to get food from charities have had to Google, 'Where do I get food?' They've never needed food before in this cost of survival crisis. Not only are those that 30%. What we know from the survey and what we know from, we have a free supermarket in Sydney and we have a free supermarket in Adelaide. And the only reason we only have two, again, is resources, is funding, is just where we could do this. But at both of those supermarkets, we're open on a Saturday and we're open in the evenings. And this new demographic are working families.

The most underprivileged in this notion of food are children. So 30% new demographic that we'd never seen before. And a 70% uplift generally in need, not only since COVID, but in the last year and a half with the cost of living going up. So the other statistic I need to share with you is that 3.2 million households in Australia at some point need food relief. Now, the ABS tells us that a family, a household, is three people. They average it out. 3.2 times three, nine million. Between nine and 10 million Australians in this country at some point need food relief. That means you know somebody. Every single one of us, if it's one in three, it means we know somebody who's either skipping a meal, sending their kids to school without school lunch, skipping breakfast. And I'll share with you just a little story that I did an event in Adelaide I was the keynote speaker at the Adelaide Oval not long ago. And after my talk, 10:30, the waiter was clearing the tables and she came up to me and she said, 'Thank you so much for what you do. It makes such a difference.' It was 10:30 at night.

She said, 'You know, Ronni, we've stopped putting milk in our coffee. We give our kids breakfast and when they say, "Why are you not eating with us?" We say, we're going to eat later, but we don't.' Now this woman could not have worked any harder. It was 10:30 at night and she was still clearing tables. Her husband has a job. It's the same 30% of single parent families are coming to our charities, are coming to our supermarket. So I guess I ask you in a country as rich as ours, these statistics absolutely horrify me. And I am pretty sure that they horrify you too. And if they don't, I don't even have to ask that because I know that they do.

So my question was really, is this a case of lack of imagination and will? If I think about things, major, great big problems that have been solved, I think about Ireland, two warring people. That was solved. You think about whoever thought that Europe would unite. If you'd have asked people in 1939 or 1944, will this world ever regain? And I'm not even talking about today's politics. The point is, I firmly believe that our food system is broken. We have lost the value of food. When we can take a bite of something and throw it away without thinking what it costs to grow, the fuel, the water, the energy, the time, the labour, and the love that's gone into that food. We weren't always like this, but this whole notion of consumption and of convenience, we as a society have fundamentally changed. And without putting blame on anybody, I can't see if there any Gen Zs here, but I will share that the surveys tell us that they are the worst wasters.

So we need to have a whole education programme towards other than those that are committed, and some of them are in the front row.

But as a whole, as a society, we absolutely seem to have lost our way, lost our way. We don't value the most valuable professions like nursing and teaching. We don't value food. We sell our companies. We sell our land. So I guess the interesting thing for me when I look at the kind of society we are building today, and I, again, I'm not touching on politics, that is not my area of expertise. My area is I see people. I know that there's food. We throw away. We grow enough food to feed 70 million people in this country. And we have a population of 30 million and 10 million are going hungry. There is something very broken in that equation.

And then I think about social cohesion. I think about kindness. I think about generosity. I think about what it is that it's going to take to shift and change our moral compass, our values. And as I said right at the beginning, I stumbled into this and not every single one of us has to start a charity. In fact, there's 60,000 charities in our country. There're probably too many. Not because they aren't started with all the best intention, but there's definitely a need to recalibrate, reconnect. One of our beautiful programmes is in Sydney. We don't yet have it here. And if anywhere there should be one in this the food capital, don't let anyone from Sydney hear me say that. This is the food capital of Australia. But in Sydney, we have a free supermarket. Now what is so magical about this free supermarket? I'm sorry, our free restaurant.

It's called a Refettorio. We're in partnership with Massimo Bottura, the Italian chef. 'Food for Soul' is the charity he started. I met him 10 years ago and our people said, 'Do not let Ronni and Massimo stay together for one minute. It's dangerous. The two of them are impossible.' The truth is, I committed that I was going to start a restaurant filled with respect and dignity that could feed vulnerable people. And we have that in Sydney. You walk into the door, nobody's asked any questions. People come in, they get seated. They're served by volunteers. My chefs, sous-chef, staff are paid staff. The restaurant looks just like any other, beautiful artwork, beautiful tables, beautiful chairs, all donated.

In fact, I should give a shout out to Georgia Danos, her business here in Melbourne. I needed tables and chairs for that restaurant. We'd done everything up the restaurant. The building was gorgeous. An old terrace that we'd been given was gutted. Everything was donated except the tables and chairs. And my people turned to me and said, three weeks before we were due to open, we are going to have to go to Ikea. I had tried everywhere to get tables. And I said, over my dead body is a piece of Ikea coming into this beautiful space that had texture and colour and glory. I picked up the phone, called Georgia here in Melbourne. And I said, I didn't know her. I said, 'Could I please speak to the owner?' And it's a furniture company. And she said, 'Who are you and what do you want to speak to the owner for?' I said, 'Well, my name's Ronni Khan and I've just built this absolutely beautiful restaurant and we're going to feed people in need. And I'm in partnership with an Italian Massimo Bottura.

And I need some chairs and tables. And I believe that's what you do. And I just thought it would be beautiful if I could speak to the owner, maybe they'd consider it.' She said, 'Well, how many tables and chairs did you want?' Now, I think she heard me say 14 tables and 16 chairs. I actually said 40 and 60. But she said, 'Yes.' So just to give you an idea, the space is beautiful. And just a beautiful story. I walked into that restaurant. I sit and have lunch there. So lunch is free, three course, vegetarian, served on crockery, mud crockery seconds, silver cutlery. I'm sitting at a table and next to me is a gentleman who definitely looks a little worse for the wear, definitely a little worse for the wear. And opposite him is a young girl, looks lovely. And I hear him say, 'So tell me what you've been doing.' And she says, 'Well, dad, I finished school and I've been to college and I'm about to get a job.' And by this stage, I'm sitting there, tears rolling down my eyes.

And then he turns around at the end and I stop listening. And at the end of the meal, I hear him say, 'I'm so delighted I could bring you to this restaurant for lunch today.' That's what dignity and respect is all about. And sharing food, caring for our people, for Australians, that is where imagination and will need to reconnect. We need to fix a broken system. We have some ideas here as to what we've asked government, what we need to do.

But I'm really excited when there's Q&A at the end of tonight, if any of you would have a chance to think about what it is you think we can do in this extraordinary country. Because on a daily basis, in our country today, kids are going without food. The stories we hear that came out of this survey, we are in about 2,000 schools across the country. We have an education programme. We teach nutrition. We teach how to cook on a budget, how to look after our planet, creating little eco warriors and climate activists. But our school system, one of the things we know is that universal meals will make an enormous difference. Now, I don't know if any of you remember, but when I was a child, and it's true from my speech impediment, you can hear that I was not born in this country. When I was a child, we were given glass bottles of milk at school every day with a piece of fruit or a sandwich.

Well, the research that's being done today across the globe tells us that universal meals and meals in schools fundamentally make an enormous difference. When kids get food, they can concentrate. I was walking down the street in Sydney and a woman stopped me. I didn't recognise her. And she said, 'Ronni, I just want to thank you.' And I said, 'What are you thanking me for?' She said, 'You know, my kid, we didn't have any food. My kid used to get thrown out of every single classroom. We started getting food from Oz Harvest. My kid went to school with food in his belly and with sandwiches and school lunch. And my boy has just gone to university.'

What can I tell you? This is the power of compassion, of care, of literally taking something that was deemed waste, turning it into a product, turning it into food, turning it into sharing it in the best way it was meant to be shared and making such an enormous difference. And just to make it very, very clear, I had the idea, but I am a magnet for magnificent people. I am surrounded by extraordinary people. That is the reason that we do what we do. But the food we collect is 0.2% of the food that is wasted in this country. Imagine if we stopped wasting half of the food and got $18 billion of that $37 billion and we put it into education and we put it into minimising food waste. Now you might see this little yellow and black tape that my people very clearly, carefully stuck before so that I could point it out.

So we worked with Monash University and we worked with behavioural scientists to understand what it would take for us to not waste food because we understand that if half of all food waste is coming from us, we need to shift behaviour. And through a matrix of likelihood behaviour and a huge survey and demographic that was done, all of the people surveyed said if they knew how to use up their leftovers, they would. So we created 'Use it up' tape. This tape, and it's literally just been stuck here for a minute. Just to show you, it is tape. It's not part of this beautiful venue's lectern. And when I leave, it will leave too. But this tape comes in a little box. We call it 'Use it up' tape. The intention is that you take that tape, you stick it on a shelf in your fridge, and you move everything that needs to be used up onto that shelf.

And that is a visual reminder. Well, I need you to know that this is in the hands of 200,000 households and they have halved their food waste. So what that means is not only have they halved their food waste, that has saved those households approximately $1,500 each. That's how much we are wasting. Now, who wouldn't want an extra $1,500 in their pocket? So this tape is available for free at Oz Harvest. I need to get it into the hands of 27 million Australians. That would be a good way of halving food waste. We do share on our website recipes on how to use up your leftovers. And we're in schools teaching kids how to use up their leftovers. And we did a school competition recently and school kids designed the box and did some really cool graphics. So this was the original designer, but our next lot are funky colours that kids designed.

So just sharing. But getting back to this notion of goodness and kindness and how it's incumbent on each and every one of us. I want to share a quote from a book. And since this is, I am part of the National Library of Australia lecture series. It's good to refer to a book. Another book in case you ever want to read it is my memoir. It is in the library if you want to take it out. But the quote that I want to refer to, to share with all of you is a quote by an author, an Israeli author called Amos Oz. His books have been translated into about 46 countries. An absolutely wonderful author who's passed away. I always love to say that he also, had he been alive today, was the moral compass of that country and he's sorely missed. But the quote that I want to share with you goes a little bit like this.

In the event of a huge conflagration like a bushfire, we as individuals, as humans, have three principle ways that we can behave. Number one, we can look at that fire and we can run away as fast as we can and leave those that can't run to burn. That is an option. Number two, we can write an angry letter to the newspaper demanding that the perpetrators get punished. It's an option. Number three, we can run and find a bucket. And if you cannot find a bucket, run and find a jug. And if you cannot find a jug, run and find a teaspoon. And I know that a teaspoon is tiny and those fires are huge. But there are millions of us. And if every one of us use our teaspoon, we can put out the fire. So I want to invite you all to become part of the Order of the Teaspoon.

Where you wear a teaspoon on your shoulder. I actually wear two teaspoons around my neck. I wear a teaspoon on my finger. And that is to remind me of the random acts of goodness and kindness that I am committed to doing every single day because it makes a difference. So can I invite you all to do this? All of you. Please, will you put your hands together? Now, can you look down into your hands? Because in your hand is your metaphorical teaspoon. So look down into your hands. Can you take your hands? Can you bring them to your heart?

And can you please commit to using your teaspoon every single day? Now, this is a pre-loved teaspoon. I have no idea where it's from because people give me their grandmother's teaspoons and I have a lovely collection. Is there anybody who would like, as a reminder of the commitment that you've all just made, is there anyone who would like this teaspoon to take with them? Don't put your hand up. Come and get it. I can't see. Come. The first person that gets here gets the teaspoon. You have to come up here because, because I need to know what your name is.

Audience member 3:

Maggie.

Ronni Kahn:

Well, Maggie, you are accountable. You didn't just take this teaspoon. We're going to find out over time what you do with it.

Audience member 3:

Okay.

Ronni Kahn:

Okay?

Audience member 3:

It's a deal.

Ronni Kahn:

I love it. Thank you so much.

Audience member 3:

It's a pleasure. And I came tonight because I read your book.

Ronni Kahn:

Oh.

Audience member 3:

And I was so inspired that I said to myself, 'I'm going to meet this woman.'

Ronni Kahn:

[unclear] I promise you I didn't pay her. No, I've never seen her before. I promise. Thank you, Maggie.

Audience member 3:

It's a pleasure.

Ronni Kahn:

That's very kind of you.

Audience member 3:

It's very inspiring to hear you speak.

Ronni Kahn:

Thank you. Thank you all so very much. I wonder, and I'm hoping that some of you have questions for me. Please don't be shy. Is that a question? No, somebody scratched themselves. It's okay. It's not an auction. Yes.

Audience member 4:

Do you have the access of the Department of Education in each state? Because I'm a firm believer that we need to reintroduce teaching, cooking and planning and financial budgeting again.

Ronni Kahn:

Thank you so much. So our 'Feast' programme, the programme that has been in 2,000 schools. And I was given the numbers of how many schools we're in, in Melbourne. If there any of my team here who know that, that would be useful, but maybe we don't. It doesn't matter. We're in more than a hundred schools in Victoria. That programme, it's curriculum accredited and it is a teaching programme. Teaches how to cook. But in answer to you around the Ministry of Education. So in order for me to get anything done, I have to go to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Social Services, the Minister for Agriculture, and the Minister for the Environment. We need a food minister, but we haven't got one yet. But that is what we need. And we are 100% right. When I was at school, domestic science was what we called it, or home economics.

But our programme is a beautiful programme. We offer it to schools for free, particularly obviously low socioeconomic schools. But thank you. Can you tell the Ministers of Education that it should be in every school? We've got the most wonderful testimonials from the schools. And last week I was in a school in Tassie, Deloraine High. And honestly, it was a wonderful thing to see. The kids made their food cooked, understood. It was just so beautiful. And we know that they take those recipes home and they cook at home. So we do know that. Any other questions? I can't see, but please -

Audience member 5:

Hi. I'm Maida Pineda. So I'm a food writer and I have a Master in Gastronomy. So I moved to Australia like seven years ago. And I wrote several opinion pieces for 'The Age' based on my observation. I moved from the Philippines. And one of the pieces I wrote was I was in shock how much stuff was thrown away in hard rubbish. So I wrote, there's one of the articles there and the other article I wrote is how Filipinos don't waste anything. So when I don't have enough money, I buy fish heads and tripe. So that was the title of the article. And it bothered me so much that there was so much waste in TVs and stuff. And the same way with food, seven years. And it bothered me so much I would ask, I live in a high rise apartment here in South Bank. And I would ask my, I was like, 'Why do we throw our food waste in the chute with everything else?' And they're like, 'It's too hard. If you want, you can carry it and bring it to the city.'

Of course, no one does that. And it bothered me so much, but still everyone would just say, 'Ask the building manager. It's too hard.' And then seven years on, last year I became a citizen. And I was sitting here listening to you and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is what it is.' I've become too comfortable. It used to bother me before when I had just moved here. It was abnormal to see so many things thrown away. And it was normal for me to eat fish heads and tripe. And then I was sitting here and I realised I had become too comfortable and have we become too comfortable? And the whole time I was like bubbling sitting here and I was thinking...

Ronni Kahn:

Well, thank you so much for your courage in standing up and admitting and saying that. But it is true. We, we are... Food is available for those of us who can afford it.

Audience member 5:

But we're too comfortable that it's not that difficult to bother to like gather together and collect your... When I found out it's 25 years and then I realised I can't just sit here and know that it's going to take 25 years for that. Because I were thinking, oh, we have, like you said, we don't need another organisation. And I was like, okay, I waste so many carrots and so many things in my vegetable drawer every week, every Saturday. And I was like, I'll gather it with my neighbours and find the bright way to put it.

Ronni Kahn:

Phenomenal. [unclear] Well, thank you so much for sharing. And yes, you're just starting to use your teaspoon. But the beautiful thing is that actually even in apartments and well, two beautiful things. One is new buildings are being more considerate and thinking about how to build composting and organic, separating organic waste. It's slow, but it's happening. But the other thing is, and again, this is just a sharing. I don't know if any of you have heard of a Bokashi composter. It can go into apartments. It can go into small places. It doesn't have a smell. You use sawdust. It's compact. Very, very easy to use. So just for those of you who suddenly wake up and make that commitment again, thank you.

Audience member 6:

I just wanted to give an example of a teaspoon remedy, so to speak. In some of the community houses around Melbourne, they match volunteer with a person who needs help with food and maybe loneliness. And you have to commit to cooking an extra meal only one day a week and delivering it to the person in question. And I just think it works very well.

Ronni Kahn:

That's a beautiful solution. Thank you so very much. Again, it's about us caring for our neighbours, caring for people that we might not even know. So beautiful. Thank you. Anything else?

Audience member 7:

Hello. Lovely lecturer. Very, very inspiring as well. So I started as an immigrant, but as a student 15 years ago and very hard to admit it, but I didn't know where to get food. I didn't have the money. We didn't get jobs very quickly. So I lost 12 kilos, pure starvation. And it would be really good if we know how you could connect universities with international students that cannot seek help. And if there's any way we can help, because now we are at a position where we can help, we just don't know how.

Ronni Kahn:

Yeah. Students are one of the biggest demographics that need food. We work with universities, some universities. We also know that students come to our free supermarkets. And on some of the campuses, we've supported having the campus having pantries. But we're very aware of that. Again, it's all about resources and budget. And when I tell you that the 1,700 charities on a wait list, I mean, to think that 150,000 people are turned away from a charity every month, I mean, makes me feel ill to tell you the truth. But we can only give away what we've got. Yes.

Audience member 8:

Ronni, thanks for all your great work. I'm interested in how you collaborate with SecondBite and FareShare.

Ronni Kahn:

Thank you so much for the question. So I was just sharing earlier, SecondBite has just changed its model and it no longer delivers to any organisation, but we certainly work with them. Some of the charities that they used to deliver to, we are now working with. In Launceston, we have just combined, got a $500,000 grant from the state government to build a food hub with SecondBite, FareShare Food Bank and Oz Harvest that we led that conversation. Until COVID, I have to say there was a lot of competition, mistrust. We just had never really. They did their thing. The truth is, we cannot do this work alone. Oz Harvest on its own will not solve hunger. Will not actually that, I'm going to say that differently, because I am committed and my commitment over the next 10 years is to end hunger in Australia.

Happy to talk about that separately. But the food relief organisations, we need all of us. Until COVID, we didn't work that well together. During COVID, we started collaborating and our Chairs meet every quarter and we now try and work as much together as possible. Yes.

Audience member 9:

Hi, thank you very much. That's been fantastic. I'd just like to make a little suggestion about how we can save some food and then maybe a question. My wife runs a food charity and our son was involved with a conference. And of course they provided meals. And at the end of it, they usually throw the meals out. Instead of that, he phoned us up, we picked it up, it went to charity, and it then became the breakfast for some homeless people the next day. And that's a simple message for everyone. If you see food, there's a way to get rid of it. But the question I was going to ask you is about the best before date on food. To me, it is a marketing ploy, but many people see it as the date they can use the food up till and beyond that, they get rid of it [unclear]

Ronni Kahn:

I'm so excited that you asked that question because my advocacy team, as we speak, we've put together a whole new date labelling into government to change date labelling. There's a trial happening with Nestle. There's a trial happening with another product. Because you're a hundred percent right, I'm with you. My granny didn't have a used by date. She sniffed, she smelled, she tasted, and she used. And we've lost that. That's part of why this is so useful. That half eaten yoghourt that your kids would come in and say, 'I'm not eating that.' Well, it's nonsense. It's rubbish. And so we are working. Our advocacy team is literally got new ways of labelling because we recognise that so much food gets wasted because of labelling. Yeah.

Audience member 10:

Hi, Ronni. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed your talk. I really like the idea of the free restaurant that you've got in Sydney and Adelaide. What do you need for it to happen here

Ronni Kahn:

Money, money

Audience member 10:

In Melbourne?

Ronni Kahn:

[unclear] No, what do I need? No. The truth is we do need money. I mean, it takes money. I was sharing with somebody yesterday. So there were two things. I have two free supermarkets, one in Adelaide, one in Sydney. I have one free restaurant that's in Sydney for all of them. The reason we could do them was because I asked, I got funding in Adelaide. A gentleman who's very well to do, had really had a tough childhood, heard me talking about a free supermarket, loved the idea and has funded that for a couple of years. It's literally a building. I need a space. It's interesting because our free supermarket takes more food than any of the charities we deliver to, as you can appreciate if you're getting 500 people a day. I keep telling Woolworths, you don't have to worry. We're not exactly in competition.

Ours is tiny. It's what we've got on the shelves, but it's literally, I need a space and I need the funding to run it. It's about safety. It's about respect, dignity, and offering a service that is beautiful. But I just want to thank you all so very much for listening and thank you to the Kenneth Myer Foundation, Kenneth Myer Foundation for creating this lecture series and for inviting me into the National Library of Australia for inviting me. It's really been an honour and a privilege. I do have one of these if somebody would like, please feel free. And I'm not offering my book cause I don't know how to do that. So I'll just go and sit down.

Alison Dellit:

Thank you. I'm Alison Dellit, the new Director-General at the National Library of Australia. And I just have three thank yous for you before we send you off to have our perfectly proportioned refreshments served with teaspoons that do belong to the convention centre, to the centre. So please don't take those ones with you. My first thank you is to everybody here. The National Library is a national institution, and we're very proud of the fact that while we are based in Canberra, at that note, thank you for the warm weather you've put on for us. We serve across Australia. We do this partly through our digital platforms like Trove in particular, partly through our work with other libraries. And I'd like to acknowledge the presence here tonight of the Chief Librarian from the magnificent State Library of Victoria, Roxanne Missingham. But we also do it by holding events like this.

And this is our main chance to come to Melbourne and to engage in conversation with a different community. And I want to thank you for coming and engaging in that process because I think these conversations that we hold, the lectures, the nature of ideas is fundamentally part of what libraries do to encourage and think through and provide space for civic discourse. My second thank you is to the Myer Foundation. This lecture series has been such an important part of the Library's capacity to play a broader role in Australia, but it's only one part of the giving of the Myer Foundation. The Myer Foundation encapsulates a set of ideas from Sidney Myer, from Kenneth Myer, and from many other members who've carried on that tradition of funding institutions, fellowships, research work, civic conversation. And one of the things that I feel very grateful for as a citizen, as well as a Director-General at the National Library, is that those processes and that form of funding culture underpins more of the fabric of our social life than I think we acknowledge.

It's part of what makes us a society and it's part of what brings us together when we have diversity and we can acknowledge both that diversity and that coming together. These are the things that comprise a society. And I think at this moment in time, it's important for us to think about how we can knit together the fabric of Australian life and acknowledge the very important contribution that funding for arts, research, culture, and discussion creates. And my final thank you is of course to Ronni, a speaker who has embodied the best of these ideas. Ronni has encouraged us to think about the values as well as the ideas that underpin our work. And while she has called us to view very frankly the situation that we're in and to acknowledge some grimness, she has also reminded us of the immense impact that we can each make every day in our small and large actions.

And that it is the imagination of humanity, our capacity to connect with each other, and our basic capacity to provide each other with dignity and respect that will create the society that we want to live in. Can we thank our speaker one more time?

And with that, I will invite you all to join us afterwards for some conversation. Thank you.