The Single Parents Action Group member spoke about the challenge of putting food on the table for her family at the recent Living on the Edge dinner.

About 50 people attended the event at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, with dinner available for just $1.

“I spoke about my own situation, being a single parent living on Newstart allowance,” Ms Hutchison said.

“I also spoke about the Single Parents Action Group – we’ve held two rallies this year to try and make the government stand up and realise what they’ve done is wrong.

“They’re pushing people into poverty.”

The Living on the Edge dinner coincided with the five-day Live Below the Line Challenge, which challenged people to live on a budget of $2 a day.

“I think the Live Below the Line Challenge has made more of the general public realise just how hard it is for people like single parents, like myself, who have been moved to Newstart,” Ms Hutchison said.

“We’re trying to pay our bills, we’re trying to feed our families and we can’t do it.

“We were struggling on the parenting payment but we were getting by, we were managing, but now it’s just unbearable.

“I’m a single mum with three teenage kids and two of them still live with me and I’m trying to provide for them and myself.

“We can’t save any money for if anything happens. My microwave broke down and I couldn’t buy a new one. Luckily my sister-in-law gave me her old one.

“What do we do? 

“Do we buy clothes, do we pay the bills or do we buy food?

“Basically we have to pay our bills because if we don’t pay our bills we don’t have a house to live in.”

Greens candidate for the seat of Bendigo Lachlan Slade described the Living on the Edge dinner as “very successful”.

“I spoke about the effect of poverty in central Victoria and the Macedon Ranges and also around the world,” he said.

“The majority of people around the world are living in poverty and things like the Live Below the Line are a great way of challenging that and raising funds to get people out of poverty.

“In a country such as ours where we’re quite privileged in a lot of ways it’s very easy to forget about people around the world and people in our own communities who are really doing it tough.”