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048: Navigating government benefits
404 Plays3 years ago
This episode will give you Mia and Dinah’s top hacks for navigating Australia’s government payments and allowances.
There are over 26 different payments and benefits available from Centrelink. Mia and Dinah talk about the 8 broad categories of payments available:
- families with children
- age pensions
- disability support
- carer support
- study-related support
- unemployment support
- crisis and special benefits
- concession cards and bonus payments.
They discuss the best place to start to assess if you are available for any payments or benefits is the Centrelink Payment and Service Finder. This service available on the Centrelink website allows you to enter your details and then suggests what payments you should investigate. It also suggests other supports such as help lines, community groups, advocacy networks and associations that may be relevant to your situation. In particular other services which you may be eligible which are relevant to life admin include:
- Financial counselling
- Department of Human Services Financial Information Service
- Legal aid
- Microfinance small loans
Mia and Dinah talk about some of the payments you may be eligible for including:
- Family Tax Benefit Part A and Part B - tax benefit for single parents or couples with children based on your income level and number of children
- Paid Parental Pay - pay to help parents spend time at home with a newborn or recently adopted child
- Child Care Subsidy - assists families with the cost of approved child care
- Carer Payment - supplement paid to someone who provides daily care and attention at home to a person with a disability or medical condition
- Austudy - payment for those 25+ returning to university to do a degree
- Jobseeker - financial help if you're between 22 and Age Pension age and looking for work
Mia and Dinah talk about some of their top hacks for navigation the system including:
- if you know your circumstances are going to change, plan ahead to assess what you need to do to be eligible for relevant payments or services
- if you need to call the Centrelink call centre don’t call on Monday - the best times are usually Wednesday and Thursday in the morning
- if you have a complicated situation do your research, collect all your documentation and then make an appointment to see a Centrelink representative
- keep all your records accessible in your life admin system to make ongoing management of the payment easier.
Services Australia - Guide to Government Payments
Centrelink - Payment and Service Finder
ATO - Government payments, pensions and allowances that must be declared on your tax return
SHAREPlease head to e Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook or Insta pages to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Efficiency
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Had Been Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life had been more efficiently to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Dina Rae Roberts, an operations manager who often gets called upon by others to try and decipher the rules on the Centrelink website.
Understanding Australia's Government Benefits
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who recalls being incredulous at the daily cost of daycare and being very relieved about the childcare subsidy. This episode will help you on your journey of navigating Australia's generous but sometimes bewildering government benefit system.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. Before we get into today's topic, we want to say thank you for listening. We're thrilled to bring you another episode and hope you get some value out of it. If you'd like to keep your Life Admin game strong, subscribe to the show on your platform of choice and also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, The Monthly Momentum, where we give you nudges and resources for what you should be taken care of at this time of the year.
00:01:02
Speaker
head to lifehadminlifehacks.com to sign up. And if you want to do a random act of kindness today, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate your recognition and love to hear what you're finding useful.
Exploring Centrelink Payments & Eligibility
00:01:15
Speaker
So in this app, we're going to start talking about all of the government payments available from Centrelink. And you're not alone if you've ever wondered if there are payments for you or maybe your family members that you're eligible for and you have no idea about.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's over 26 different payments and allowances and benefits. And I have to say, I didn't know whether I would just magically be advised that I was eligible for something. Like I get a letter in the mail, or an accountant would pick it up, or you'd somehow magically find out about it. But these are things that are important to know, to support or replace your income.
00:01:49
Speaker
depending on their purpose and their situation. And in the last 20 years, more and more Australians are living with a disability. There's more informal carers. More people are working part time and flexibly, which can impact your income. And not only that, but people's income has been affected by COVID. So really getting on top of this can really help your household finances.
00:02:12
Speaker
And some of them are tax free and others you need to declare in your tax return. We've got some that are assets tested or income tested to determine your eligibility and some of them are based on other criteria. So we wanted to provide some intel to give you a flag of where you might want to investigate further about your eligibility and bring you some peace of mind. We've basically done a legwork to give you a rundown of what you might be eligible for.
00:02:36
Speaker
And this is kind of an area where having your life admin foundations in place is so helpful because you'll need information around income and assets and making sure you've got access to passwords. So if you've got those foundations of your life admin system humming, it's really going to be helpful.
00:02:55
Speaker
In this episode, we're going to talk about what payments are available and how to find out if you're eligible. The payments fall into eight broad categories. They're families with children, people who are on the age pension, disability support, carer support,
00:03:12
Speaker
There's also study-related support if you return to get a degree or become an apprentice later in life, unemployment support, crisis and special benefits, and then concession cards and bonus payments. And in the show notes for this episode, we're going to link to the websites that we reference and the places to start.
Tools for Determining Benefit Eligibility
00:03:29
Speaker
Basically, the best place to start if you're curious about understanding what payments you might be eligible for is the Centrelink Payment and Service Finder available on the web.
00:03:40
Speaker
You type in your residency status, your relationship status and age, and some other personal information like how many kids you've got. And then that really helps suggest what payments you should investigate that you might potentially be eligible for.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, this was really useful. I didn't know this tool existed. I had no idea. I was relieved. It makes sense. It's so much more accessible. Once you type in your details, there's further information about each payment type and you can go on to estimate your allowance and the rate or what you might get back and devices and steps. This is brilliant. It also leads through to services in your state.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that payment and service fund is a really good place to look not only if your circumstances had changed, but also potentially if they're going to change in the future and you're wanting to try and budget going forward what you might be able to get if, for example, you think you might lose your job or you're planning on having children and you're wanting to do some forward planning.
00:04:38
Speaker
And also I think this is a growing area where people are having to support their parents, navigating, you know, aged care and pensions or supporting family and friends who might be dealing with mental health or they've separated or there's family and domestic violence going on or, you know, there are care or there's health issues. Because this system is hard to navigate. And if you're supporting with someone,
00:05:01
Speaker
you might like to understand what services they have available to them. So when you go through this payment and service finder, it suggests the payments and then a whole bunch of helplines, community groups, advocacy networks and associations that might come in handy. Yeah. So those related to life admin that you might be able to make use of or places like Financial Counseling Australia, which provides free confidential financial counseling.
00:05:27
Speaker
the Department of Human Services Financial Information Service, which provides seminars and online videos to help you better understand some of the income and asset tests. There's also access to our officers who can help explain your options.
00:05:42
Speaker
There's also links to legal aid for each state, the Money Smart site, and various microfinance providers who'll give small loans up to $3,000. All right, so let's go there. As we said, there's 26 different payments. We're not going to go through all of them. Let's take a look at some of the most relevant allowances for the life admin, life hacks audience.
Family & Parental Support Benefits
00:06:02
Speaker
Yes, so do we want to get started with maybe the family tax benefit?
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, so families with children, family tax benefit, there's Part A, there's Part B, they give these things wonderful names. This is really based on how many kids you have and your total household earning. And if you fall within certain thresholds, then you will get a tax benefit. So it's interesting to know what those thresholds are, because often you can assume that you have to be earning, you know,
00:06:29
Speaker
not particularly much, to be eligible. So for the family tax benefit part A, if you have one kid and earn less than $105,000 a year, you might be eligible. Two kids, the threshold's $145,000. Three kids, $183,000. So if your income's around these areas, you might want to explore your eligibility. Yeah, so family tax benefit part B is for people who earn a lower income. So if you're a single benefit earning $100,000 or in a couple,
00:06:59
Speaker
where the highest earner earns less than $100,000, you should investigate your eligibility. And if you're on this family tax benefit Part B, then you're also eligible for a healthcare card and other things like rent assistance. Yeah, all helps out.
00:07:13
Speaker
The other thing I know that I took advantage of when I had my Bebe's was the parental leave pay. This was new. When I had my daughter, who's now 10, this legislation had just come in a year or so before, so it was good timing. Essentially, there's two government-funded payments for parental leave. There's parental leave pay
00:07:35
Speaker
usually for the birth mother, so you can spend time at home with your newborn or your recently adopted child. That is based on obviously being an Australian resident, your residency status and how much you've worked leading up to the birth and your income. So if you earn $150,000 or less, you'll be eligible.
00:07:54
Speaker
And there's also a dad and partner pay to help dads or partners take time off work to bond with their baby. And it's the same test. It's either you earn 150k or less and you've lived in Australia for a certain period of time and you are doing a certain amount of work. And these are paid on top of any paid parental leave you might get from your employer and they're paid out for the first 18 weeks after your baby's born or your child is adopted.
00:08:17
Speaker
So that can come in handy if you want to take some time off to bond with your child and just focus on those crazy weeks or months or years. It can help cover some of the costs. And I think with the dad and partner pay, it's important to know that what you actually have to do is you end up having to take leave without pay from your work and then you apply for the payment from Centrelink and Centrelink pays you the payment.
00:08:41
Speaker
which is slightly different to the birth mother, who usually gets the parental leave paid from her employer, but Centrelink pay the employer. So the dads have to do a bit more legwork to get that organised, so it's important to get them motivated so that they can also share the load in those early days. We have talked before about the fact that as soon as you get pregnant and you have children in your life, the life admin goes into a drive. This is the beginning of it. This is the beginning of it.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah. I think making sure that you've got a system to save all the relevant numbers and information you need as you start to fill out further paperwork down the track is important. Yeah. Which brings us to the childcare subsidy. You've had your kiddo, you've had some time off. At some stage, you might want to go back to work or study or there's a whole bunch of activities that are eligible.
00:09:34
Speaker
The childcare subsidy assists families with the cost of childcare, so you can get back to doing other things. And also, obviously, if they're in daycare, there's some early childhood education that goes on. So this covers family daycare, if they go off to a daycare center, and also aftercare at primary school up until the age of 13, which I didn't realise when I had a kid. I couldn't even, I didn't think I realised aftercare existed.
00:09:58
Speaker
But then I'm finding out that the childcare subsidy applies. I was like, oh, thank God, because daycare, aftercare, it's not cheap. It's not cheap. The aftercare can be quite expensive when you think, you know, you think, oh, finally they're at school, the cost is going to go down, but it can actually still just keep on coming. And happily, there's been some changes in the recent federal budget.
00:10:24
Speaker
Previously, you now might be eligible for more payments because the rebate has changed for families who have two or more children in childcare at the same time. And they're also removing the rebate cap, which used to be like an annual limit of the total amount of childcare rebate you could get. So that's changing from 2022. So those are welcome changes.
00:10:43
Speaker
Yay. And so with the childcare subsidy, it is not just for people who are going back to work. It can be paid work or unpaid work. So if you're working unpaid in the family business, for example, it could be because you're studying or volunteering or you're setting up a business. And also if you're on maternity or parental leave. So if you look at child number two and you have you're on maternity leave, child number one can be going to daycare or aftercare and that childcare subsidy is eligible for them.
00:11:13
Speaker
So keep that in mind. Yeah. Okay. So that's childcare. What about a carer payment?
Support for Disability & Medical Care
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah. So as we said, there's more and more Australians living with disability and often carers are spending time potentially away from the office or taking on extra costs. So there are government benefits that can support people who are providing daily care. So this is an income supplement paid to someone who provides daily care at home to someone with disability or a medical condition.
00:11:40
Speaker
So if they're aged 16 or over and they can't, it's causing substantial functional impairment or it might be a dependent child aged under 16, both of these make you eligible as a carer. And there are different versions of this. You might, depending on what's going on in your situation,
00:11:57
Speaker
you might be eligible for a healthcare card only, or you might also get a care allowance with that healthcare card. This depends on the level of disability. Yeah, and as your parents get older, it's worth knowing that sometimes your parents might get it for looking after their spouse. And that can be a real help to be able to provide some income and to be able to help pay for things that they might need to be able to have to keep their spouse at home. So certainly worth looking into if you've got
00:12:24
Speaker
are one of your parents who needs to look after the other. Yeah. We have AUS study, and this is an interesting one.
Educational & Employment Assistance
00:12:31
Speaker
If you're returning to university to do a degree or move into an apprenticeship and you're aged over 25, you might be wanting to support a career change, then you might be eligible for AUS study. This is, again, something that requires an income test, but it can support the cost of ever skyrocketing degree costs.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yes. In Australia. And I say that as someone who works for the university. Some of them are iced and really expensive now. So, both Oster, the Anacara payment, these are things that you need to declare as part of your tax return. Often when you go in online to do your tax, it's all going to actually suck in some of this data and the calculations, but just do keep that in mind. And then there's the JobSeeker payment. That's the traditional sort of welfare payment, financial help,
00:13:16
Speaker
if you're aged between 22 and the age pension age and you're looking for work or you're sick and injured and you can't do your usual work or study. So that's not to be confused with the JobKeeper payment which was a temporary payment that was made available during COVID which was administered through employers but that finished in March of this year.
00:13:37
Speaker
Okay, so for me, I'm sort of navigating this. I guess my first bumping into some of this stuff was around the childcare subsidy during daycare when the kids were little.
00:13:47
Speaker
and having to estimate your household income, getting those lunches, you have to provide the estimate so they can work out the childcare subsidy. And as he said before, Diana, having that budget information and your income, asset information in hand some way
Navigating Centrelink: Tips & Personal Stories
00:14:04
Speaker
is essential so that you can fill in these forms and make sure you're not missing out on these benefits.
00:14:09
Speaker
And then with the parental leave pay, I did that for my first child. And I don't think I was eligible for my second child because I hadn't actually worked enough in the 10 months proceeding. I didn't meet the activity tests, which I was kind of bummed about because I probably could have changed. I had a bit more control over that and then I wouldn't have been eligible. So that's something to keep in mind because I kind of did myself out of some dough there.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yes, I think that's going back to the, it's really good to look in advance at these things if you know your circumstances are going to change just to make sure.
00:14:42
Speaker
you can make the eligibility. Yeah. What about you, Diana? Well, when we moved back to Australia, our kids were already in child care age. And I must admit, I found the system so confusing because I think I hadn't been there from the beginning when they were born. And I ended up having to go to Centrelink to get numbers. And I actually missed out on a bunch of money because by the time I figured out that I needed these numbers,
00:15:08
Speaker
I'd already had them enrolled and were paying for the childcare. So it took some time. But once I had that set up, I found the prompts from Centrelink, they're actually quite easy to follow around declaring income. And because I've always been quite on top of our financial situation, I find it quite easy to submit that information. But I can understand if you don't have your life admin system sorted, that that could feel quite overwhelming to log in and to give that information in.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, so when you have your children in Australia, you'll just have the whole maternal health system to go and sign them up and go and get that Centrelink reference number so you can start getting whatever you're eligible for right from the get-go. But when you're actually pregnant, that's when you're starting this process.
00:15:54
Speaker
But I've also helped other family members at the other end of the spectrum, both with pension payments and carer allowances. And I'm a financially savvy person, but it's quite technical around these different income and asset tests.
00:16:10
Speaker
So what i have found is the best approaches to like read up on all the information to all the research on the center link website you know call accountants if necessary collect all the documents you think you need and then actually go to center link to confirm and sit down with someone to go through
00:16:29
Speaker
everything and make sure that you've interpreted it correctly and to hand over the information there and then because if you try and do more complicated things, it can take months and months and months of backwards and forwarding. Sometimes it really does pay to see a human. Although the online services are improving, I would actually say wherever possible, avoid calling Centrelink. They're notorious for having the longest wait times ever.
00:16:57
Speaker
Longest wait times and inevitably they just suggest for you to go in. It's kind of infuriating. And did you make an appointment before you went in? Yeah, I have definitely done that. I do think the other thing is if you do need to call, you know, this is one of those things where and this is probably true for lots of call centers. Never, ever call a call center, including Centrelink, first thing on a Monday morning, because that's just the longest wait time ever.
00:17:24
Speaker
and also during lunch times. So banks, any other organisation, don't call Monday or lunch time. The best time to call is usually on the morning or on a Wednesday or a Thursday. So think about scheduling that in your calendar because then you're likely to have a much shorter wait time.
Reassessing Benefit Eligibility & Life Changes
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah. All right. So the triggers for these kinds of, oh, should I be looking at whether I'm eligible or not, are really around births. If there's a birth, if there's a death, if someone's getting married, if someone's getting separated,
00:17:53
Speaker
if someone is experiencing mental or physical illness, or they have a disability or an accident, if your employment status changes, or if your income and assets change, or if you're getting up there and you're pension age, which has increased from 65 to 67, who knows how old it will be died before we're
00:18:19
Speaker
So we hope these hacks will make navigating the payment system easier for you. Our top hacks are head to the Centrelink Payment and Service Fund to see what you might be eligible for. Call the Department of Human Services Financial Information Services Officer to chat through options and eligibility to avoid going into Centrelink. And keep all of your records safe and secure in your life admin system to make applying and maintaining your payments much easier.
00:18:49
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
Connect & Stay Updated
00:18:51
Speaker
Show notes for this episode are available at lifeagminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.