A massive surge in pleas for help from the poor has the Salvation Army and other care providers doubting their ability to help all those in need this Christmas/New Year.

The traditional Salvos’ Xmas hot lunches in various capitals were forced to turn away the starving from their doors for the first time in living memory and other charities such as St Vinnies and the Smith Family have also run out of food parcels, much needed clothing and Xmas gifts for kids who will now sadly go without.

The upsurge in pleas for help has been put down to the large number of people left destitute by the Albanese government’s decision to cap coal and gas prices, including the boards of directors and upper-management echelons of Santos, Woodside, Chevron and Shell and their families. among many others.

“We have been brought to our knees and Australia has reverted to a 1950’s Soviet era socialist state,” said one Santos senior board member who asked shamefully not to be named. “This is pure nationalism of which Stalin would be proud.”

“We’ve lost everything, including our annual Mercedes upgrade,” sobbed a Woodside senior executive as he rummaged through clothing with his current wife and family at a Vinnies on Sydney’s inner-north-side.

At one Brisbane soup kitchen, one portly old man holding out a large dish admitted that while he looked quite a bit like Clive Palmer, he was definitely not the former billionaire owner of Waratah Coal and Mineraology.

“I wouldn’t want to be in that big fella’s shoes now that his well-earned wealth has been savagely ripped from him by a Labor government green with envy over the amazing things he has managed to achieve in his life.”

At top: A starving child, believed to be the son of a senior Santos executive, pleads for more at a Brisbane soup kitchen.

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SUVA: Former Fijian prime minister and military leader Sitiveni Rabuka (pictured above with supporters) is refusing to divulge the source of legal advice behind his challenge to the results of the nation’s recent elections.

Mr Rabuka, leader of a Fijian opposition party who also instigated two military coups in 1987 to overturn an election result and was involved in another coup in 2000 as well as being suspected of helping to instigate a military mutiny, said all he was doing was trying to support democracy as he had always done.

“I’m just trying to stop the steal by emboldened radical-left and the fake news media,” he said. “That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”