An illustrator from New Zealand has used a powerful cartoon to challenge the ‘rubbish’ notion that poor people deserve their poverty.

Toby Morris, a father of two who has drawn comics since he was 13 years old, publishes regular opinion piece cartoons for Kiwi website The Wireless.

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His most recent piece, ‘On a plate’, was the website’s most-read story for the month of May, its attack on a common myth about inequality striking a nerve.

“We hear this argument all the time that poor people just need to chin up, hard work, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and so on, and I just think that is rubbish,” Mr Morris told The New Daily.

“There is always so much more to the story than that.”

• CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL CARTOON

The illustrator was “nervous” about touching on such a serious issue, and said it was easier to challenge this misconception about inequality in a comic.

“I’ve tried, deliberately, to not get too preachy in the story,” he said.

“I’m not trying to tell everyone exactly what to think. I just wanted to lay out a very simple set of circumstances and let people come to their own conclusions about it.

“For me, I take out of it that ultimately we’re all the same. We just don’t get the same chances in life.

“If we can all keep those differences in chances in our minds, then we can be a bit more understanding [of] what other people are going through.”