Centrelink cut off her disability pension of $560 a fortnight three years ago when her husband got a full-time job.

"They reckon that my husband's earnings are too much," she said.

"He gets about $800 to $900 [per week] - his pay varies, that includes bits of overtime."

Mrs Patterson - who left school after year 10 without being able to read or write - still receives $320 a fortnight in family allowance for her two daughters but it does not stretch very far.

"I only get money for the kids, that's all I get, I just struggle,'' she said.

''I pay $70 on my electricity bill, I'm paying the laptop off at the moment, I've nearly finished paying that off … after Christmas I'll own the laptop. By the time I pay everything I don't have much left - probably about $90, I think it is."

It is not much money to cover groceries, let alone clothes or shoes for her daughters, aged eight and 14.

Her husband's income has to cover their mortgage repayments, rates, car insurance and petrol, and often the groceries, too.

The struggle can be socially isolating for Mrs Patterson; at the moment she is out of mobile phone credit with no money to top it up. "I don't go anywhere; people say, 'Come and have coffee'. I say, 'With what?'

''I don't socialise with anybody. I went out last night with my husband - we went down to The Tradies for the meat raffles and that was only for an hour."

The two meat trays they won will come as a relief on their next grocery shop.

"People ask me how I cope,'' she said. ''I just cope from day to day."