According to store managers all over remote South Australia, Aboriginal people are starving because they cannot afford to buy food. But the state's Aboriginal Affairs Minister Grace Portolesi doesn't seem to care.

Essential foods in remote community stores cost nearly double the price of food in urban areas. The cries for help from the Aboriginal community were so bad, the Red Cross stepped in to help. Still, Ms. Portolesi maintains that her "comprehensive food security strategy"--a shared market garden--was enough to save starving people. According to The Australian, she called the Aboriginal people's pleas "offensive sensationalism" and implied that store managers were merely complaining because they lost money.

Improving food security for remote-dwelling Aborigines is vital to helping them out of the poverty cycle. Demand that Grace Portolesi take a more aggressive stance on helping South Australian Aborigines.

Your recent brush-off of South Australian store managers' concerns about Aboriginal starvation in remote communities shows a startling lack of compassion, foresight, and responsibility.

Simply having a "market garden" is clearly not emerging as an all-encompassing solution to Aborigine poverty. Although it has merits as a long-term, sustainable aid, the fact that people are going hungry for days at a time cannot be ignored.

I urge you to take more comprehensive action against Aboriginal poverty in remote areas.