Thanks for the ideas, and we are celebrating because M is keeping his job - kind of. He will be in this position until Christmas, and then start his apprenticeship in January. So this means that we'll not have to deal with Centrelink (yay) but we'll take a massive cut in income, so we'll be using some of your tips anyway! The insurance is something I hadn't considered, thanks. Also our phone/internet contract finishes in December so I'm going to ring around and see if we can get a better deal with that too.
Thanks again