TWEED single parents hit by recent cuts to parenting payments said they have been thrown into poverty.

A mother of two young children said she will have trouble meeting rental payments as a result.

"There is also a lot of pressure to work full-time, which I am more than willing to do," she said.

"But finding after school care and paying for it are not easy tasks.

"I've always seen parenting payments as a safety net when I can't work."

She said there "just aren't any jobs in my field in the Tweed."

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are 4,193 single parents in the Tweed Heads region.

Greens federal candidate, Dawn Walker stood with local single parents and their families outside the Centrelink Office in Brunswick Heads on Saturday as part of a National Day of Action coordinated by the Single Parents Action Group.

She said Tweed parents were affected by the cuts.

"These families have been forced off the Parenting Payment and onto the lower Newstart Allowance - an allowance that is widely recognized as being too low to live on," Ms Walker said.

"Some local mothers have told me that they already have part time jobs, yet they will still lose between $100 and $200 per fortnight due to these cuts."

She said this decision by the government, with the support of the Coalition, is pushing North Coast children towards poverty.

"We should be supporting our single parents to raise their children, not punishing them with these cuts," Ms Walker said.

At the rally, single parents and their supporters heard from The Greens NSW spokesperson for Family and Community Services, Jan Barham, who spoke out about the cuts to support payments that will impact on single parents and their children.

"When the Federal Labor Government decided that from January 1 this year all single parents would move from the Parenting Payment onto Newstart as soon as their youngest child turns 8, they created negative impacts for those parents and their children," she said.

"This move resulted in cuts of $60 to $120 per week for those important but already disadvantaged members of our community and it is unacceptable.

"The Newstart Allowance is almost 40% below the poverty line.

Ms Barham said at state level, she has put a motion to the parliament to seek support for an increase to Newstart Allowance and has initiated a petition to raise awareness within the whole community.

Ms Walker said if she was elected she would work to reverse the cuts to single parent payments and increase the level of Newstart funding.