Working Life Residence (WLR) 106-06030000

Item

Description

1

Australian Citizenship as proof of residence

There are two dates on an Australian Citizenship Certificate:

• the date their application was successful. This date can be used to verify residence periods
• the date the customer took the oath of allegiance is the date of grant of citizenship. This is the date to code on the RSLEG screen

For citizenship granted:

• before 1 September 1973, a person required 5 years residence immediately before the date of grant
• between 1 September 1973 and 25 October 1984, a person required 3 years residence immediately before the date of grant
• between 25 October 1984 and 1 July 2007, a person required 2 years residence immediately before the date of grant
• after 1 July 2007, a person requires 12 months permanent residence out of a minimum 4 years residence immediately before the date of grant

Note: check if the customer left Australia to reside overseas at any time following the grant of Australian citizenship and ensure that is reflected on the CRES screen.

2

Certificate of Residence Status

A customer may have been issued a Certificate of Residence Status:

• the Date of Grant of permanent residence is shown on this certificate
• code CRES with this date
• DOC the record with ‘Date of First Arrival (DOFA) has been verified from Certificate of Residence status #XXXXXX (Certificate number is located in the top right hand corner of the document)

Note: check if the customer left Australia to reside overseas at any time following this date and ensure that is reflected on the CRES screen.

3

Old Passport

An old passport may have Entry Stamps into Australia:

• Check that the date shown in the passport is a date on the AUS027 or liaison and that no other stamps show the customer leaving the country within 2 years of entry
• Code the CRES screen with this date and doc the record stating ‘DOFA verified from passport stamp’.

Note: check if the customer left Australia to reside at any time following this date and ensure that is reflected on the CRES screen.

Item

Description

1

Manual calculation of Australian Working Life Residence (AWLR)

• Sometimes AWLR will need to be manually calculated. For example, where the customer uses their late partner's AWLR
• Firstly, work out where the AWLR begins and ends (16th birthday and Age Pension age (or date of death if earlier)). AWLR must be between these 2 dates
• Verify the late partner's date of arrival in Australia, if applicable
• Verify what periods they were residing in Australia
• Calculate each period of residence as years, months and days. Make sure each period falls between the 16th birthday and Age Pension age (or date of death if earlier)
• Multiply the number of full years by 12 to convert into the number of months
• Add this to the number of months
• Add the days together. When adding days, 30 days equals 1 month, so add any additional months from this calculation to the total number of months. An extra month is added to the total for the odd days (including zero days)
• Note: if multiple periods of residence, add all the years together, then all the months together and then all the days together.
• The total months result is the AWLR

2

Example of AWLR calculation

A person has the following periods of Australian residence:

• 2 years, 4 months and 23 days
• 6 years, 2 months, 17 days, and
• 1 year, 4 months, 20 days

The years are added together to total 9 years, which, when multiplied by12, equals 108 months.

The months are added together to total 10 months.

The days are added together to total 60 days. This equals 30 days + 30 days + 0 days remaining, which equals 3 months (2 whole months of working life residence + 1 month). The extra month is added once only, after totalling all working life residence.

Total WLR = 108 + 10 + 3 = 121 months.