Building healthy public policy: addressing the socioeconomic drivers of food insecurity in Australia.

'Building Healthy Public Policy' is one of the five strategic action areas in the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, highlighting the role of governments in enabling equitable access to the basic prerequisites for health, including food and income. Yet, 40 years later, 2.6 billion people worldwide are unable to afford a healthy diet, and more than 1 in 8 households in Australia experience food insecurity. In this perspective piece, we draw on the latest data to: (i) discuss the ongoing discordance between the primary drivers of household food insecurity and Australia's predominant means of addressing the issue; (ii) examine trends in social welfare spending and food insecurity in other high-income countries; and (iii) discuss opportunities for reducing food insecurity in Australia by increasing social welfare spending. In Australia, emergency food relief plays a crucial role in alleviating hunger in the short term and should continue to receive support. However, Australia's over-reliance on emergency food relief demonstrates the failure of welfare policies in allocating resources equitably. In line with international commitments, Australia's National Food Security Strategy must be underpinned by the human right to food. Actions to reduce food prices by tackling industry concentration and market power must be combined with actions to increase household incomes (e.g. by increasing social welfare payments) to enable ongoing access to affordable healthy food for all.