I was wondering if anyone had any adivce on getting out of debt??

DH and I have had a real bad run of luck recently in regards to finances, in that our income decreased majorly about 3 months ago. For some reason the Famitly Tax Office had been paying us at the wrong rate, so in about April they cut our payments completely. At the same time DH stopped work for a few weeks (he works casually, so no leave payments, or anything). We were already struggling before this as apart from living beyond our means already , we moved and I crashed the rental van, which we then had to pay for.

Anyway, we now have 2 credit cards that are maxed out and we can no longer meet the minimum repayments, plus three overdue bills, one of which has gone to a debt collector. We also have a personal loan that we are currently a little bit behind on.

Anyway, next week, the new financial year starts. I have contacted the FTO and ensured that they have the correct income estimate for us (I even overestimated a bit, just to be on the safe side), and we will be getting FTA and FTB payments again from next week (lower than we were getting last year, but still something). DH is working again and has taken a couple of extra shifts for a few weeks. I have worked out a budget and think that within 6-8 weeks we can get on track again.

However, I have a few problems in regards to our outstanding debts, i.e.
1) The penalties for the credit cards being maxed out, and hence over the limit due to fees, etc, are so huge that every time we make a payment, we are even more behind by the end of the month than we were before. Is there anything that we can do to maybe stop the penalty for just one month??
2) I have tried to negotiate a payment plan with the provider of one overdue bill but we couldn't agree to anything reasonable. I am working something out with the other one. So far, they charged me a 20% fee for late payment, but as long as a have a few weeks to pay it off, I don't mind.
3) The debt collector has bullied us twice into agreeing to repayments that we could never hope to make, which we have defaulted on both times (we did make 2 payments, just lower ones than they wanted...) I tired to call them again and arrange something that we could stick to, but because we had not made the "promised" payments, they wouldn't let me.

I don't know what to do now. I am happy to pay all these bills, I just need a little more time. I don't mind paying interest, etc, as long as the penalties are reasonable and I can pay them over time. DH is seeing a financial counsellor today, but apparently they asked for a referral from Centrelink, which we don't have, as we don't get Centrelink payments... He is going to go anyway, but I don't know if they will see him. What can I do? I know that we shouldn't have defaulted on the payments that we said we would make, but what can we do when the people we speak to demand something that is completely beyond our means?? Any advice would be really appreciated.