FOR the whole fortnight, Rose Peterson* waits for pension day, ''when you feel like you're rich for a day''.

Then the deductions start: rent on her Braybrook unit, utilities, phone bill, whitegoods and TV rental, car repayments, petrol, medication for her asthma. The price of survival.   :(

''I look down at my purse and I'm back where I started from. I'm broke again for another fortnight, and it's a horrible feeling. Horrible.''





In 2007, Rose did something different: she bought a lounge suite that would recline, easing the pain in her arthritic legs. ''Like a blind idiot,'' she went into $600 debt through a nationally franchised lender, Cash Loan Money Centres. Then there was a second consolidation loan of $2000.

The fees were almost as much as the original loans, and the 29 per cent interest rates have her trapped in a cycle of repayments.   :(

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard talks of the ''dignity of work'' and the economic and social costs of welfare dependency, she is talking about people like Rose Peterson, in suburbs like Braybrook in Melbourne's west. In the last census, Braybrook was Melbourne's most disadvantaged suburb. Sixteen per cent of people are unemployed, three times the national average. Another 37 per cent are not in the labour force at all. A quarter of the houses here are owned by the Office of Housing.




There's a heaviness in the air in Braybrook, of poverty and its partner - debt. It stalks almost everyone you meet - the refugee who didn't understand the phone contract he signed; the mother whose credit card debt spiralled out of control buying food for her children; the man who borrowed money to send his son to school camp.   :(

Social welfare workers warn there are no ''quick fixes'' to getting people off welfare and into work. And no matter how low the income, or how poor people's prospects, there are still companies competing to sell new contracts, new credit, the prospect of a new life that can seem - temporarily - so enticing.

BRAYBROOK, nine kilometres west of the city, was developed in the middle of last century on the flatlands between Footscray and Sunshine. More than 6900 people live here, many in rows of dilapidated 60-year-old houses - some weatherboard, some in what locals call ''concretes'' - which were built for the old working class, railway and meat workers and those who serviced the now-closed air force stores depot to the south.




Braybrook has twice the number of new migrants as the rest of Australia, twice the number of single-parent families and workers in low-skilled jobs, and about half the median income. Even so, new development is creeping in from Maidstone to the east, driving housing prices to astronomical heights - $500,000 to $600,000 for the old quarter-acre block. The slow gentrification increases the prices and the stress for those renting privately, but the older working Australians and waves of new migrants, Vietnamese and now African, still dominate.

The draughty houses are full of people on disability or aged pensions or unemployment benefits. And they are assailed by debt, most of it incurred just to get by.   :(

''It's getting worse,'' says Martin Stevens, a financial counsellor with the Footscray Community Legal Service, who spends a day a week seeing clients at the Neighbourhood House in Braybrook.

Once, Braybrook was surrounded by factories and meatworks, the providers of work and its dignity. Most have closed now - metal perforators Richardson-Pacific, ETA peanut butter, Rothmans cigarettes, Invicta carpets.

There are drugs here, and break-ins, petty theft and violence. The pokies and their flashing dollar-sign promises mean that the suburb's two hotels are among the most lucrative in the state.   :(

Still, Braybrook people, according to the chairwoman of the Neighbourhood House, Joan Greig, ''don't dwell on their needs. They don't moan and groan about it, and like to exude something positive.''

Steve Miles, who has lived here most of his life, wouldn't live anywhere else. ''I love the western suburbs … I'm a western suburbs boy … I like everything that's close, like shopping centres, train station, the bus service. This area - we're quiet here.''


FOR Rose Peterson, the sales pitch from one short-term lender was hard to resist. ''We like to say YES!'' shout the ads for Cash Loan Money Centres.

Petersen raised six children and worked all her life in factories in the western suburbs, making everything from lollies and cigarettes to ammunition.

Now, at 64, she has had a stroke, suffers from arthritis and lives alone on an aged pension in public housing.   :(

''The money's so freely available … you go away and come back and they've got the money. Cash,'' says Peterson. ''And the head's going around, you think, 'Oh, beautiful, I'm going to go and buy something new!' ''

But on her first loan, of $600, Peterson paid $462 in fees and an interest rate of 29 per cent. If she missed a payment, she was hit with a further cash penalty. As the repayments ate into her disposable income, she rolled it into a second loan to cover the costs. This one was $2000 but had $1500 in fees added on top. And last year she took out a third loan of $300, with an extra $231 in fees.   :(

THE debt collectors phone in the morning. The callers do not identify themselves but ask Denis Kinkufy Kayenge to confirm his name and date of birth, and then start hassling him for money.

''They say, 'You know this money? In five years' time you will not be able to do anything in Australia if you don't pay it,' '' Kayenge says. '' 'Australia can't trust you if you don't pay this money … If you don't, you know, Denis, you'll go to court.' ''  :(

Kayenge is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a survivor of torture who arrived in Australia in 2008. In Africa he was a teacher, a journalist and author, but now he's on the dole. His $480 fortnightly Newstart payment is eaten up paying rent on the private market for a house he shares with two others, on electricity, food, phone bills and petrol.

The unpaid bill is to Telstra. He owes $983.54. For middle-class Melburnians, this would be an inconvenience. For Denis Kayenge, it might as well be $1 million. Telstra passed Denis's debt to international ''receivables management'' firm Dun and Bradstreet.

Almost two-thirds of Braybrook residents are born overseas, with African migrants the fastest-growing group. Denis Kayenge has applied himself to learning our language and customs, but it has not protected him from the dangers tucked away in the fine print of contracts. He now understands that the $30 a month he paid for a Telstra landline did not include the cost of the calls themselves - and that calls to Africa are expensive.

He now understands that his ''free'' Vodafone mobile handset with its ''cap'' of $49 a month really meant that he would pay that as a minimum each month. But he did not learn this until after the night he finally tracked down the wife and children he had not seen for five years, and phoned them in Africa. His $682 bill from that single call last year is part of a $1189 bill to Vodafone.   :(

He also now knows that if you break such a contract because you can't afford it, you must pay it out in full anyway. But despite Kayenge's cultural difficulties and debts, people, particularly from telcos and power companies, still turn up at the door trying to sell him things. Kayenge was recently signed up for a new power provider, with the lure of a temporary 10 per cent discount, then a few weeks later, another company called.

''People are door-knocked to death - they are door-knocked three or four times a year,'' says Denis Nelthorpe, the manager of the Footscray Community Legal Service. ''When they switch power companies all the time, they are paying the wrong bill, they get a new bill and don't think they have to pay it. And there is a $45 or $50 disconnection and reconnection fee.''   :(

A recent debt blitz that Nelthorpe ran revealed that 61 per cent of the financial problems experienced by African clients related to power companies. Kayenge also has had phone companies on his doorstep. For one the representative carried a phone in a box and told him, ''It's free, sign here.''

The price to Kayenge to learn these lessons has been almost $3000, and mornings ruined by debt collectors. ''One Congolese family, they were in trouble with $10,000 … their marriage broke up because they had $10,000 to pay to Telstra … An old man selling African hats with seven children, [who] spent five years in refugee camps, is owing Telstra $4000,'' he says.   :(

The threats of court action from debt collectors terrify Kayenge. Some of the calls evoke in him the traumatic stress symptoms that live on after his African imprisonment - the rapes of children he witnessed, the death of his friends at the hands of soldiers and police.

''They put pressure and pressure without knowing that you come from a background of pressure,'' he says. ''When I see a police car even passing here, I feel like my heart is beating.''

Stevens will try to get Telstra to waive Kayenge's debt on compassionate grounds, but warns that the telco is ''not very forgiving when it comes to debt''.   :(

i think the penny is dropping in this moment regarding the spacetime

continuum..many people realize now

regime change takes courage yes

when you have 2 clowns in business suits telling 1000s of human

beings what to do,and when how to do this..reality may

soon come into perspective

and many beings look upon your world now with interest

and watch in earnest as these changes continue to unfold

how much longer will the mass consciousness allow the tyranny

to exist

interesting viewing yes

continue

namaste

-:)

THE most important expense in Mary Hardwick's intensely managed budget is the $6000 per year - at $180 per week - that goes to send her two younger children to Braybrook's Catholic school, Caroline Chisholm Catholic College. She calls this money her ''investment'' in daughter Lera* and son James*, ''part of the package of bringing up decent human beings''.

But the cost of school, uniform and books, leaves little left over from the sole parent's benefit, augmented by child support payments and a casual job. She has training and, at 48, worked full-time for two decades. But in the mean streets of Braybrook she would prefer to be home for her children after the school bell rings.

The cost of that decision is no presents from her at Christmas. Hardwick sometimes goes without food, and for entertainment they drive around Sunshine West and look at the big houses, or fantasise about what they would each do if they had $1000.   :(

Once, armed with money from a tax return, she took the delighted children to a cultural event - the WWE wrestling. ''I count the cents. Sometimes there's no five-centses. It's horrible. It is horrible. I worked and I know what it's like to have money coming in. And I know what it's like to go to the theatre or the Arts Centre,'' Hardwick says.

Three years ago, when her eldest daughter turned 16 and shortly afterwards moved out, the girl's Centrelink payments no longer contributed to the family budget. So Hardwick got her first credit card.

''Food, bills and schooling, that's all,'' she says. ''Sometimes clothing or shoes for the kids.''

Soon the card hit the limit, $5000. ''You wake up in the morning and it's hanging over you. I suffer from depression … It is very humiliating. Very. Humiliating. You basically have to bare your soul every time you tell your story.''   :(

But she refuses to bow to it. A debt collector once tried to bully her, but she rebuffed them, and is struggling but managing to find $50 a week to repay the credit card..   :(

As hard as it is, Hardwick is one of the better off, because she is managing it ''in blocks''.

''If you don't look at it in blocks you'd go absolutely

nuts. You'd stay awake all night every night.''   :(

so crook do you have the answer????...the stories are terrible we can all find ourselves one day with our backs against the wall...where do we turn its not good enough these loan sharks are allowed to hover over these estates causing even more misery. even they should pay the price of their dishonesty and outrageous interest charges.

we throw working things away now.. I have even heard where the charities dont want donated goods because they are not good enough.. so are these people also looking for brand new and second hand just not good enough?..

I find it so hard to believe they have to go into debt someone needs to turn that around being proud is one thing being silly is something else again

mr imcrookonit.

you sir, are what is needed here.

this place is overrun by c*nts and "uni graduates".

their occupation?

telling other ppl how to live.

F*CK these C*NTS.

i have this first hand.

allz i gotz to do is walk a few metres into Burwood NSW, and observe these creatures.
what dummies.
and we're lettin' them in here?
hey you gov't arse holes. who died and made you god?

btw, the cops have too much power.

j.

So what you're saying ,imcrook, is that 'Rose' doesn't know how to budget???

I recently bought my mother a $1000 electric lift chair (for her arthritis), a $500 dollar reverse cycle A/C unit (for the hot summers) and a new $375 clothes dryer........on 'higher purchase', for a TOTAL repayment tab of about $90 per fortnight.....

gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 4:44pm:

So what you're saying ,imcrook, is that 'Rose' doesn't know how to budget??? I recently bought my mother a $1000 electric lift chair (for her arthritis), a $500 dollar reverse cycle A/C unit (for the hot summers) and a new $375 clothes dryer........on 'higher purchase', for a TOTAL repayment tab of about $90 per fortnight.....

that sounds lovely gizmo a nice thing for a son to do.. not that many like you unfortunately what you are saying though is you can get credit..not all can.. its very hard to budget on a pension..you really have no idea untill you try it..