Review and appeal procedures for Agreement decisions 106-04005000

Australian pensioners all have the same review and appeal rights whether they receive their payments in or outside Australia, or whether they are paid under an Agreement or autonomously.

Generally, a customer who gets a pension from an Agreement country has the same appeal rights as customers of that country.

For reviews of decisions made by the agency about an Australian pension, the process is the same as for autonomous customers if the customer is in Australia or the Agreement country.

The process for reviews of decisions made in relation to foreign pensions from an Agreement country also applies to customers in Australia, but processes vary between countries.

Agreements allow documents for a review of a decision in relation to an Australian or foreign pension from an Agreement country to be lodged in either country. For example:

• a customer in Malta can lodge documents for a review of a decision about an Australian pension with the pension authorities in Malta
• a customer in Australia can lodge documents for a review of a decision about a Maltese pension with the agency

This means that review requests or documents must be accepted at any service centre if they relate to a decision about a foreign pension from an Agreement country.

The date of lodgement of the documents in one country is taken to be the date of lodgement of the documents in the other country.

Note: this does not apply to documents for a review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). For AAT reviews, the date of lodgement will be the date the documents are received by the AAT in Australia. This is because the AAT is controlled by separate legislation, not social security law, and that legislation is not affected by any social security agreements.

Under Administrative Arrangements, requests for reviews and related documents are transmitted through the designated Liaison Agencies in each country using agreed methods in much the same way as claims or other requests for information.

This means that requests for reviews or documents received in a service centre must be recorded and sent to International Services (CIS) if they relate to a review of a decision about a foreign pension from an Agreement country.

Note: documents in relation to a foreign pension claim or review must not be scanned to the customer record. They must be sent to CIS via internal mail.

CIS then sends the request for review or related documents to the Agreement country via normal liaison.