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.
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