The federal government has confirmed it will not proceed with the Tax Laws Amendment (Incentivising Food Donations to Charitable Organisations) Bill 2024, saying the legislation contains “deficiencies that compromise its policy intent”, even as food insecurity remains at record levels across Australia.
The federal government’s response on 31 March to the Senate Economics Committee report, which was released in November 2024, accepts the committee’s recommendation to reject the bill while noting but not endorsing five recommendations from the Coalition senators’ dissenting report.
The bill, a introduced by West Australian senator, Dean Smith, had introduced a private senator’s bill in July 2024, proposing a food donations tax offset for companies that donate surplus food to registered food charities, including Foodbank, OzHarvest, and SecondBite.
It was designed to shift the economics of food donation. Currently, under Australia’s tax framework, businesses receive the same tax outcome whether they dump or donate surplus food.
The proposed offset would have been refundable for companies with aggregated turnover below $20 million, and non-refundable above that threshold. The offset percentage scaled with turnover: 45 per cent for businesses under $20 million, 40 per cent for those between $20 million and $50 million, and 30 per cent for those above $50 million, capped at $5 million or a set percentage of food donation costs.
Government concerns stand firm
In its response, the government reiterated its position that the bill presents “an uncapped and unaccounted-for cost to the budget”, risks preferencing large corporations over small businesses and charities, and lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent the dumping of poor-quality food.
On a Coalition recommendation to expand eligibility to partnerships and trusts, incorporate Public Benevolent Institutions as eligible recipients, and raise the turnover threshold from $50 million to $250 million, the government said the enhancements would not resolve the bill’s core problems. It maintained that even with those changes, the tax offset “would still risk disproportionately benefiting large corporations with established food donation policies and practices”.
The government also declined a Coalition recommendation to exclude Mandatory Food and Grocery Code signatories – effectively large supermarkets – from the offset, noting that other large businesses in the sector could still benefit disproportionately.
Funding commitments cited as alternative
Rather than bring forward alternative tax reform, as recommended by the Coalition’s dissenting report, the government pointed to existing grant initiatives.
From 1 October 2025, Foodbank, OzHarvest, SecondBite, and Good360 will share in $20 million over five years – described as a doubling of the government’s investment in food relief.
The government also cited a $37 million investment through the Food Waste for Healthy Soils Fund to support organics recycling infrastructure, which it said had leveraged more than $239 million in co-funding from state and territory governments and the private sector. Once complete, those projects are expected to increase Australia’s capacity to recycle an additional 1.1 million tonnes of food and organic waste per year.
The government also referenced the December 2024 release of Australia’s Circular Economy Framework, and the End Food Waste Australia’s nationwide consumer behaviour change campaign, The Great Unwaste, launched in September 2024.
Sector remains frustrated
The government’s position is unlikely to satisfy the food relief sector, which has pursued the tax incentive concept for more than a decade. As Food & Drink Business has previously reported, KPMG modelling of an earlier iteration of the incentive found it would “enable an estimated $2 billion per annum social, economic and environmental benefit” and contribute to Australia’s halve-food-waste-by-2030 commitment.
When the Senate Economics Committee rejected the bill in November 2024, Foodbank Australia COO, Sarah Pennell, told Food & Drink Business, “The report is poor, in that instead of making recommendations based on the submissions and hearings, the committee just flatly rejected it. It is frustrating, because some of the concerns with the bill that drove their decision we had addressed to them directly in the hearings.”
Since then, Foodbank Australia has continued to press for reform. CEO Kylea Tink told Food & Drink Business in November 2025, “Food insecurity doesn’t happen in isolation – it’s a combination of a debilitating and incessant cost of living crisis, slow-growing wages, inflationary pressure, unaffordable housing, and an inadequate safety net. The federal government must step up, lead and play an active role to free up the system. And that requires tax reform.”
The Foodbank Hunger Report found 3.7 million Australian households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in the 12 months to July 2023. Food waste, meanwhile, costs the economy an estimated $36.6 billion annually, with 70 per cent of the 7.6 million tonnes wasted each year still edible at the time of disposal.
The government’s National Food Waste Strategy sets a target to halve Australia’s food waste by 2030. With the bill now formally closed off, the pathway to achieving that target without structural tax reform remains unclear.
