MOTHER-of-three Angela Downey (pictured) was among a group of single parents who called for the reversal of contentious cuts to parenting payments outside Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Werribee office last Thursday.
Moves to shift single parents onto Newstart began under the Howard government in 2006 and were continued by the Gillard government earlier this year, when it shifted 84,000 single parents whose youngest child had turned eight onto the dole.
Some protesters wore blue ties in a sarcastic reference to the Prime Minister’s recent speech warning of a country run by men in blue ties.
Ms Downey, 43, who was moved off the single parent payment onto the lesser Newstart allowance in 2009, says it has been all but impossible to support her three teenage children.
