In this country there's no such thing as child poverty. Call it what it really is: child abuse.

There's no excuse or circumstance any parent in this country can claim, to not feed their children.

The simple fact, unpalatable as it may be, is parents of hungry children put their own needs first.

Those needs are drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and smartphones.

We have decades and generations of career beneficiaries who are unemployed and in many cases unemployable, yet we continue to import labour from other countries to do the work this idle lazy nation of bludgers refuse to do.

These bludgers have a WINZ case manager assigned to them to ensure that the taxpayers will continue to fork out for their lifestyle forever. It's all bull ####.
I was hungry as a three-year-old, during the wharfie strike in 1948 by law – nobody was allowed to help us but we got by on our own.

Dad fished and gardened, while mum sewed our clothes. I can still remember eating two Round Wine biscuits for breakfast with dad making it sound like a feast. That period of my life could truly be called child poverty. Mana Party leader Hone Harawira tried using the modern fad called child poverty as a political platform – look how that ended. But it's no surprise the punters know more than Hone.

More recently I see letter writer P Dolden has jumped to their eventual demise as a misguided thinker, calling our economy rock bottom and embracing the concept of child poverty.

I reiterate, there is no such thing as child poverty in this day and age. It's child abuse – no more, no less.

If you can't afford to feed children don't have them in the first place. If you do have children, don't expect someone else to feed them.

Our welfare system was once envied worldwide, but now we're the laughing stock.
I'm sick of seeing taxpayers picking up the tab for losers and wasters, who are multiplying more rapidly than the Ebola virus – and I'm not alone.

Returning to my experience of the hunger games, back then it was a case of the Government starving people back to work.

Nowadays, the Government pays people to starve their children and not to work. Oh how far we have come.

K Molloy, Te Puke.