Residence assessment for customers claiming Parenting Payment (PP) 106-06020110

To satisfy residence criteria for PP, the customer must meet all of the following requirements:

• be an Australian resident, and
• generally must be in Australia at the time the claim is lodged, and
• remain an Australian resident throughout the period of payment, and
• satisfy or be exempt from serving the 2 year qualifying residence period, and
• satisfy or be exempt from serving the 4 year NARWP

Two year qualifying residence period

PP is subject to a 2 year (104 week) qualifying residence period. Only periods a person has been in Australia as an Australian resident can be counted towards the qualifying residence period. The 2 years can be calculated over multiple periods of Australian residence and does not need to be served in one continuous period. There is no requirement for it to be served in the customer's current period of Australian residence, past periods may also count towards the waiting period. Some exemptions may apply.

Four year NARWP

For customers whose first permanent residence visa was granted on or after 1 January 2019, a 4 year (208 week) NARWP will also apply. This waiting period is served at the same time as the 2 year qualifying residence period. Some exemptions may apply.

Claimants will not have to serve the 4 year (208 week) waiting period if they hold or have held a visa subclass 115, 117, 835, or 837 but will still need to serve a 2 year (104 week) qualifying residence period.

Therefore, customers who have recently arrived to live in Australia and are claiming PP are generally required to be in Australia as an Australian resident for a period of 4 years before PP is payable.

Customers who have recently arrived to live in Australia and are claiming Parenting Payment are required to have been an Australian resident and physically in Australia for 4 years, either in 1 period, or in a number of periods before PP is payable.

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

The requirement to have been in Australia for a period or periods totalling the required duration of the NARWP, allows for broken periods of residence in Australia to count if the person continued to be an Australian resident. For example, a customer who has returned 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.

Generally it is not a requirement that the period of residence required for the NARWP occurred immediately before claiming. However, if a person is claiming an exemption from the NARWP for the reason that they became a Lone Principal Carer, they need to have become a lone parent after the start of the current period of Australian residence. The Lone Parent exemption only applies to Parenting Payment Single (PPS), JobSeeker Payment (JSP), Youth Allowance (YA) and Farm Household Allowance (FHA).

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

The exemptions from the qualifying residence period are not necessarily the same as the exemptions from the NARWP. This means that a customer may be exempt from one waiting period but still be required to serve the other:

• If a customer is exempt from the 2 year qualifying residence period but not exempt from the 4 year NARWP, they will still have to serve the 4 year NARWP
• Alternatively, if the customer is exempt from the 4 year NARWP but not exempt from the 2 year qualifying residence period, they will still need to serve the 2 year qualifying residence period
• If the Lone Parent exemption applies to a customer, they will be exempt from both the NARWP and the 2 year qualifying residence period

For example, Australian citizens have an automatic NARWP exemption, but not an automatic qualifying residence exemption. So an Australian citizen claiming PP would be exempt from serving the 4 year NARWP but would still be required to serve the 2 year qualifying residence period unless they have another type of exemption which exempts them from the 2 year qualifying residence period as well.

The Process page contains information about all of the exemptions and more information to help determine if the customer has a 4 year NARWP or 2 year qualifying residence period, or is exempt from one or both.

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

A customer must also have at least one PP child to qualify for PP. A child must also satisfy residence requirements in order to be a PP child. A PP child is not subject to a qualifying residence period or NARWP, only the customer must satisfy (or be exempt from) these requirements.

The new claim process will attempt a datalink with the Department of Home Affairs. If successful, the Immigration 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, the residence information will need to be manually recorded. If the Department of Home Affairs has provided the information, it will take precedence over any conflicting information provided by the customer. Once the Department of Home Affairs record is matched with a customer's record, ongoing updates to movement information and visa changes will be automatically recorded.

The decision about whether a customer is or was residing in Australia needs to be manually assessed and recorded by the Service Officer. This information is not provided by the datalink.