Hawke's Bay vet nurse challenges politicians to live on her income for a month

A Hawke's Bay vet nurse and mother of two has challenged politicians to live on her income for a month.Kayla Knibb wrote in to RNZ's Checkpoint saying she was sick of politicians arguing while families struggled to get by."I am angry, I am exhausted and quite frankly, I am sick of watching politicians argue over election polls while families like mine are drowning," she wrote.Knibb spoke to the programme on Wednesday and said her family were struggling to make ends meet."You shouldn't be having to make these choices, you're meant to be working people, full-time jobs, we should be in a better place than where we are."Knibb and her husband both work, earning about $100,000 to $130,000 a year before tax.They've been making decisions on what they can go without in order to manage bills, she said."I can't really remember the last time I really bought packets of meat at the supermarket, we've gone to lentils, and chickpeas, and things because they're really cheap."There's just so many things that we have to try and juggle to make things a little bit better, and I don't really know what else there is."Knibb was also fundraising for her son who has a chronic lung condition and was on IV antibiotics.They've been declined additional financial help from anywhere else, she said."We work too much and we've been told we earn too much money to have any help from any external means," she said.She said they've been trying to upgrade there home, so it can be a healthy home for her son."I had no idea that working hard, and kind of being put in this position, that it's not something that we're going to ever be able to do."It was especially tough for families with children, she said."You've got to juggle daycare, food, working, sick leave, annual leave, it just all adds up and there's nothing left to give at the end."Knibb wanted to see a politician try and survive on her income."I don't think they've ever had to be in that position, I don't think they've ever had to choose, or if it was, it was a very, very, very long time ago" she said."I want them to see whether they could live off our income, and then when they have a big bill in the middle of it that they can't pay and they have to choose what to do, how do they catch up."