Many Australians have been contemplating the expanding magnitude of poverty ever since the details of the May budget were unveiled.

The Australian Council of Social Services have this week released a report which reveals that half of all Newstart recipients are living below the poverty line.

These are the same under 30-year-olds the Liberal/National government intend tipping off this meagre, inadequate allowance and into the total despair of having zero financial support for six months.

Inevitably young people will be evicted out of rental accommodation.

Some will be cast back onto the doorsteps of already stretched families or onto the mercy of charities and emergency services that are already operating at capacity.

Some will succumb to mental illness.

Let’s not forget that suicide is the leading cause of death for those in the 15 to 44 age bracket.

Others the government wants to shuffle into lower incomes include adults under 25 who will be taken off Newstart and given even less money on “youth” allowance.

Both the disabled and older citizens (in their late 60s) will be asked to jump through Centrelink hoops in the guise of getting “work ready”.

Yet I have not cited the single biggest budget cut.

Foreign aid has taken a 20 per cent hit.

This would have been money well spent.

It could have provided clean water, basic shelter and rudimentary health care to struggling nations so poor, that the poverty itself is a cause for unrest and potential instability.

Looks like this government is in for the long haul, well so are those who are working to eradicate poverty.

Well beyond anti-poverty week we are resolved to dismantle this inhumane, deceitful, poverty manufacturing machine that is the Abbott Liberal government.

— CASSANDRA POLLOCK,

Wangaratta