Single parents have rallied across the country today to protest against changes that move single parents' welfare from Parenting Payment to Newstart.
About 84,000 single parents were moved from the single parent payment to the lower Newstart unemployment benefit in January as a cost-saving measure by federal Labor.
There's resistance inside the Labor Party, with suggestions the federal government may be facing a backbench revolt over the issue.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
Labor MP and co-convenor of the party's Left faction, Doug Cameron, says he didn't join the party to take $100 a week off single parents.
In Melbourne, dozens have gathered in Melbourne to call for the reversal of Commonwealth cuts to single parent benefits.
Single mother-of-two Karen Jones, the co-ordinator of Single Parents Action Group Victoria, says she's been losing $240 a fortnight since the changes took effect from January 1.
Ms Jones said she was working, like 68 per cent of Australian sole parents, so the cuts hit her and her children, aged 12 and 14, even harder.
"Too many of us are now going into poverty and a lot of hardship," she told Saturday's rally.
"I'm finding it hard for them, just in the school holidays, to go out and do something with their friends," she said of her children.
"It is not fair, it is not right."
Federal Member for Melbourne, The Greens' Adam Bandt, said single parents were suffering because the Labor government chose to pick on them instead of standing up to rich mining companies to save money.
"They chose single parents because they know single parents tend not to have a spare $26 million lyng around to run an advertising campaign," he told the crowd.
More money was being reaped from the cuts than from the mining tax, which showed the Labor government had lost its moral compass, Dr Bandt said.
The federal government had said the welfare changes would be worth about $728 million in savings over four years.
In Brisbane, about 30 people rallied outside City Hall and marched through the city to protest the changes which yanked as much as $120 out of their weekly budgets.
Single parent Bronwyn Rees said that, ironically, the change meant she had to quit her part-time job as a sales representative.
She could no longer afford the fuel to get to work.
Under the single parent payment Ms Rees said she could earn $176 a fortnight before being taxed at a higher rate, but under Newstart that dropped to $68.
Amber Skinner said her Newstart payment only covered rent for herself and two children, the rest of life's expenses came out of her $200 a week part-time wage.
"The kids have to miss out on doing sports.
"I can't afford to take them to the dentist," she told AAP.
"It's horrible.
"I don't go out, I don't have a social life."
Ms Skinner said the government should instead be penalising fathers who don't pay child support.
Greens senator Larissa Waters spoke at the rally, saying she hopes Labor's backbenchers revolt to the point where their changes are reversed in the upcoming budget.
"It is a heartless decision which is condemning single parents to poverty and their children to poverty," she said.
