From Parliament with love: state kitchens make 300,000 meals for poor
It’s a cold and wet Friday night and 50-year-old Cat is eating her first meal of the day, in a lane behind the Salvation Army’s Bourke Street headquarters.
Cat lives in a squat − a vacant house, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, where there is no running water, electricity or gas.
The Salvos’ cafe is closed because of COVID-19 restrictions, so her meal of braised beef, potatoes and peas, followed by cake and fruit salad, comes to her in a paper bag through a serving window.
And it's supplied by an unlikely source – the Victorian Parliament kitchen.