Age Pension Concierge @ yourpension.com.au

Various news outlets reported on the 11/1/17 that the human services minister, Alan Tudge, said “…I know that the call wait time for Centrelink can be long, the average call wait time at present is about 12 minutes…” and “People can also go to a Centrelink office and typically they’ll be able to see a person, in person, within 10 minutes.” Now this is a significantly different to that reported by Centrelink staff and that which has been presented at Senate enquiries. The Australian National Audit Office reported that in 2013-14 13.7 million callers hung up after waiting for as much as 1 hour. From all reports the current situation is now far worse; especially since the average age pension claim processing times have gone from an average 6 weeks to 4-5 months! Now let’s test those ‘access’ times. It’s unlikely to be statistically significant, but it may give an idea of how a ‘typical’ Centerlink recipient needs to handle the situation. We are going to work with an age pensione

By now most pensioners will have received a letter from Centrelink outlining the changes to the age pension test from 1 January 2017. We have received a significant number of queries regarding this letter. Hence, we will attempt to summarise the most common concerns. For expediency we will use one central reference ‘document’ that in turn refers to key Government data. This reference is one of a series of fact checks published by The Conversation. We will refer to this document as The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-half-to-two-thirds-of-the-australian-population-receiving-a-government-benefit-41027 Proportion of pensioners affected – 90% unaffected sounds better than 300,000 Australians to lose. The Centrelink letter states that “Ninety per cent of pensioners will either not be affected by this change or will receive an increase in their pension”. The Conversation estimates that 2.4 million Australians “were receiving Age Pensions or Veterans Affair

“John” recently “went through” a divorce and considers that he no longer has the funds to purchase a home whilst on the age pension. John is living with his son and their family. John and his former partner were on the full age pension and both were receiving approx. $660 pf. This is a summary what he did following the sale of the family home. He continues to run a small business that requires him to travel to Bali to purchase stock. He determines that the company would benefit if he “bought” a house in Bali to use when he visits. You can not own property in Bali but it will be treated as an investment property for Centrelink purposes. The property is valued at $300k. John also has a further $200k in super. As a single age pensioner, without assets, he would have been entitled to approx. $870pf. Now with the above assets his age pension falls to nearly the same as what he was receiving as a part of a ‘couple’ to $660pf.  As there is no international agreement with Indonesia

When providing advice to a Centrelink age pensioner, a recent article in the mainstream press (7/9/16) suggested “for a relatively small amount, such as $500,000”.  Of course “relative” can mean a number of things and is dependent upon - relative to what. So let’s look at that relativity. First we look at what $500k in super means to a single age pensioner – as was the case for the press article. Let’s assume that this was the total amount of assets held by the age pensioner. The age pension would be reduced from $870 to approx. $440pf for that “relatively” small amount. In 2017 that age pension is expected to be reduced by a further $7,700 pa. A weekly loss to the age pensioners 'budget' of nearly $150 per week from the current 2016 pension. Back to judging whether that $500k is a relatively small amount. In December 2015 the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia Ltd(ASFA) published the report “Superannuation Account Balances by Ag