More and more Australians are turning to charities for support as the country's economy continues to grow at a crawl. Despite projections of a brighter longer-term outlook, economists warn that there's still more pain in store for household budgets.
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00:00Ira works a casual job, but like many Australians, she's finding it hard to make ends meet.
00:08The cost of living is just not affecting people that are unemployed or people that are homeless.
00:13It's affecting people that work, and I work, and it's not enough.
00:18She's taken to getting groceries at a free supermarket in Adelaide, which officially
00:23opened just three weeks ago.
00:25It means that, you know, there's a little bit money left over for other things.
00:30The anticipation was there would be around 100 guests a day, and we've been exceeding
00:37200, 230 people a day.
00:40Charities say they're seeing more demand, and economists say that's not surprising,
00:46given this week's data from the Bureau of Statistics.
00:50While inflation sits at 3.8%, the economy grew by just 0.2% last quarter.
00:56It paints an economy that is slow, that's very clear, but if you look at it from a longer
01:03term perspective, it is the slowest that it's been since the 90s.
01:09While the latest GDP figures show a slow and challenging period, some economists say growth
01:15could stall even further when the July to September quarterly data is released later
01:20this year.
01:21I would suspect that in the short term things might get a bit worse before they get better.
01:26But Dr Stone says the longer term outlook is brighter.
01:30I believe it is a matter of time, let the policy do its work, and then we'll see relief
01:35to households that are really doing it tough.
01:39It means those holding out for interest rate drops might be left waiting until inflation
01:44begins to ease.
01:45In the meantime, services like this one say they're doing what they can to help.