Residence assessment for customers claiming Carer Payment (CP) 009-04030030

To satisfy the residence criteria for CP, both the customer and their care receiver must:

• be an Australian resident
• generally must be in Australia at the time the claim is lodged, and
• remain an Australian resident throughout the period of payment

The customer only (not the care receiver) must also satisfy a 104 week NARWP or have an exemption from the NARWP in certain circumstances.

Customers claiming CP who are new Australian residents must be in Australia as an Australian resident for the duration of the NARWP before CP is payable. Alternatively, they may have an exemption from the NARWP.

If a CP claim is rejecting due to the NARWP and the customer lived on Norfolk Island before 1 July 2016, see Requesting and coding additional residence data for Norfolk Island claims.

Services Australia introduced a 1 year (52 week) NARWP for Carer Allowance (CA) from 1 January 2019. It is determined by the visa subclass and grant date of the customer's first permanent residence visa. Therefore, in some circumstances a person may qualify for CA while ineligible for CP. However, the care receiver must also be an Australian resident.

Before Carer Payment is payable, customers who have recently arrived to live in Australia and are claiming Carer Payment must have been:

• an Australian resident, and
• physically in Australia for the required duration of the NARWP, either in 1 period, or in a number of periods

Note: customers do not need to serve the NARWP period of residence immediately before claiming.

Temporary absences from Australia in the waiting period do not restart the NARWP, but the days a customer is overseas do not count towards meeting the NARWP requirements. For example, a customer claiming Carer Payment may have a 2 year NARWP. If they leave Australia temporarily for 3 weeks the NARWP period does not recommence, but the absence extends the NARWP end date by 3 weeks.

This lets broken periods of residence in Australia count if the person continued to be an Australian resident. For example, a customer returns to live in Australia after several years living overseas may have previously lived in Australia as an Australian resident. The period of former Australian residence would count towards any current NARWP requirements.

Note: the NARWP only needs to be served once for the applicable payment.

The new claim process will try a datalink with the Department of Home Affairs. If successful, the datalink will automatically record:

• a customer's visa and movement information from 1 September 1994, and
• grants of Australian citizenship, where available

Where the datalink is unsuccessful, residence information must be manually recorded. If Department of Home Affairs provided the information, it will take precedence over any conflicting information the customer provided. Once the Department of Home Affairs record is matched with a customer's record, the system will automatically record ongoing updates to movement information and visa changes.

The Service Officer must manually assess and record a decision about whether a customer is or was residing in Australia. The datalink does not provide this information.

For current CP customers, it may be necessary to update country of residence, visa information or Australian citizenship details. For help, see Activating the Department of Home Affairs datalink and contingency procedures if datalink is unavailable.