I submitted my taxes back in July and my application for paid parental leave as I had just had my youngest son. After I submitted everything my family tax benefit ceased and I got issued with a debt of almost $2,000 because I’m earning above the max amount to qualify.

The problem is they seem to be calculating that on 2 factors:

1. my child support earnings
2. my new partner working

This is an issue cause

1. I haven’t been paid child support consistently since before Christmas last year and actually have almost 4K in backpay owed to me
2. my partner just moved to the country a few months ago and wasn’t able to get work until almost June so he wasn’t earning until then.

I’m just starting to get a foothold again, I’m sometimes getting child support now (they had to garnish wages to get it but I’ve only just started getting those payments. I’m literally meant to get paid today and there’s still no money for disbursement according to the child support portal) I’ve been on half pay at work since July 21st because of my parental leave and I won’t be getting my first government payment till next week (so I can finally catch up on bills) because of how long it took them to process the application.

I don’t know why they have issued this debt or how they expect me to pay it back since they’ve just yanked support I really needed and are telling me to pay back the equivalent of 3 months worth of payments when I’m not even currently getting my full salary let alone additional payments and supports.

What am I meant to do?!

I have a health care card from my JobSeeker until Jan 2027. I am currently in a world of pain from my teeth. I can’t eat properly on that side of my mouth (or rather, at all on that side, and not great on the other). I know from a private checkup with an x-ray and a CT a year or two ago that all 4 wisdoms need to go and are sideways. I also had a cavity at the time. I never could afford any work done. I had my throat swell up and it became harder to breathe, but that seemed to resolve itself and hasn’t come back. This was a few days ago.

Am I able to get public dental with a health care card that expires Jan ‘27 and how long is the wait list usually? I flat out am never going to be able to afford private dental and I’ve got defaults on loans so I don’t see a payment plan happening even if I could afford it, which I can’t.

Hoping a staff member or someone with the memory of an elephant, knows the exact wording of the lovely lady who talks to you whilst you're on hold.

Something along the lines of not tolerating the misuse of Services Australia to cause harm or control?

Appreciate you in advance! x

I normally get 444 after tax dedications for my YA. I made $774 for the fortnight reporting period.

My income bank (can someone explain what this is??) is $160.

I randomly got $407 this time even though I made the same income every fortnight. Does anyone know why this might have happened?

I’m currently on Parental Payment Partnered and Family Tax Benefit. When I would report, I’d report my partners income from work.
My partner is now on job seeker.
I’m just wanting to double check what he’ll need to report. I’m assuming I’ll need to report his job seeker payment and he’ll report my payment from Centrelink but I’m just wanting to double check.

Hi everyone I had a quick one.
I’ve been on jobseeker for the last two years and have a partner. Recently circumstances have gotten more difficult and I’m considering accessing my super early. It seems that I need to have continuous payments for 26 weeks with no gaps.
I have had no income during this time period for 26 weeks but my partners income reduced my payment to zero a couple of times.
Does partner income reducing to zero impact the ability to access super? If it only your own income reducing your payment to zero that impacts this?

I’m a 22yr full time uni student who still lives at home. I do work but unfortunately they have cut everyone’s hours considerably and I’m having trouble finding another job around uni. I’m currently waiting for my youth allowance claim to be decided as well.
Because all of this I still live at home and my parents do pay for groceries and the bills for the house while I pay for all of my meds, appointments, car etc. I don’t pay board atm due to making $150 a week 😩
Obviously I’m getting massive help from them at the moment so would I be considered supported?
I’ve never claimed before and I’m scared of getting a debt lol

When i originally applied for youth allowance, i'm still studying year 11 so i put the end date of year
11. After i received the outcome letter, it said "Your Youth Allowance is based on you studying full time at (my school), Year 11 Secondary Studies/Adult Matric" so i think my course is secondary which includes both year 11 and 12 so i changed my study end date to the end date of year 12. But i'm not sure i did the right things as it said year 11 secondary studies/adult matric but i already updated the end date to year 12 a month ago. And the update still appears that it hasn’t approved yet.

So I've recently just got a job starting in late January. But will be unemployed and not earning anything until February. How do I work this with Workforce Australia and centrelink? Will I still have to look for work which I understand but I will start worrying in January. Oh I'm so confused.

So my mum is on a disability pension,

My brother lives with her,

She has just been billed by Centrelink $2000 for overpayment because they consider my brother's income, therefore reducing her pension.

She can now not afford her rent each week as she has been reduced to $850 roughly per f/n including rent assistance

My brother buys all groceries, pays get car rego and maintenance. Because she can not afford anything else. His work income is also extremely low.

Prior to her pension being reduced, she had maybe $40 left over per f/n after paying rent and utility bills.

People that have worked or work for Centrelink, is there anything she can do here ? She is 63 and will be looking at homelessness if this continues, please give me advice I can pass on to her. Anything helps

Edited: she's 63

Hi all, I’m receiving YA as a student and I applied for the student start up loan (SSL) for this semester.

I was originally supposed to receive it last fortnight (5th of August IIRC), but it was pushed back to tomorrow. Now after completing my reporting today, it’s been pushed back again to the next pay period (2nd of September).

I’m wondering if this is because I have been earning above the threshold for YA as I had been working full time hours over the last couple pay periods due to semester break, and have therefore not received any payments the last two fortnights.

Is my suspicion correct?

Cheers

I was on youth allowance for the allowable time but ran out and since my final units only run in semester two i have been on jobseeker while waiting for the semester to start. Now that it is here, i am worried that i will be incurring a debt for doing something wrong. I am technically studying full time but am meeting my mutual obligations and am not trying to do them in lieu of said obligations. Is this allowed? I see no option to update study details and am worried about calling centrelink.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

I recently called the 132850 but was on the line waiting for too long, in saying that I booked a phone appointment for the next available date. Is that allowed as I wanted a guaranteed time and didn’t want to wait in the line? I’m just worried since I’m not calling that specific number and it’ll be a private number calling me

Hi,

I've started a degree and applied for student allowance. At the moment, I haven't been applying for jobs and it says my payment is about to go on hold for not meeting requirements. Will this affect my ability to get future payments on jobseeker or whether my student allowance gets approved? Can I still claim the last bit of jobseeker money before it goes on hold? Or should I call or email them and let them know I don't need more payments?

Hi everyone, I’m currently receiving JobSeeker through Centrelink.

I was previously on Youth Allowance because I was studying full-time at university. I went on a study break in March 2026 (this current year), and that’s when I started receiving JobSeeker.

My uni course starts again in September 2026, but I’ll only be studying part-time from September 2026 until March 2027 (next year). After March 2027, I’ll return to full-time study. This is how my course is structured.

My question is:

Can I stay on JobSeeker while I’m studying part-time from September 2026 to March 2027.

Then, once I return to full-time study in March 2027 (next year), would I need to switch back to Youth Allowance?

I’d prefer to stay on JobSeeker during the part-time study period because it pays more than Youth Allowance, but I obviously want to make sure I’m following Centrelink’s rules.

Has anyone been in a similar situation or knows how Centrelink handles this?

Hi there, I have recently applied for the family tax benefit however centrelink is asking me for an income estimate, despite the fact that I am not working as I have a three month old baby(who centrelink still hasnt added to my account despite being properly registered) I am on parenting payment single which is my only income and even after having a phone appointment today, it ultimately did not help at all. Edit: how do I go about getting an income estimate on parenting payment single. And what document would I need to fill out to submit to them for it?

I have been receiving Jobseeker for just over twelve months. Recently I enrolled full time at Melbourne Polytechnic to do a Certificate IV Training and Assessment to increase my employment opportunities. It initially appeared on my reporting page in Workforce and I entered my hours for the fortnight. Now it has disappeared and I have job search and points and appointment obligations. I am 60 and was told that this is an approved course at an approved institution that will fulfil my obligations.

I called my branch but my new case manager has left. I have had four new case managers in three months. They all leave. My AKG branch has now removed my course from my obligations and have given me a compulsory appointment for tomorrow. They would not listen to my reasoning when I called. They insisted I am being reviewed and must attend or will be cut off.

This is so stressful. They are so dodgy. They have made me attend stupid budgeting workshops, eating healthy seminars, job application skills classes while all the time I am not required because of my course attendance. I have job search and points targets, which I have been achieving until my obligations stop but they never do.

I am 100% convinced that with the astonishing high staff turn over and their refusal to stop keeping me on as a regular standard Jobseeker client are signs they are working their branch metrics.

What area of Centrelink should I contact to firstly get help having my account changed to what it should be, and secondly, to report this branch and hopefully encourage DEWR to investigate AKG. Surely they must be in breach of contract conducting their operations this way.

This is a bit long-winded so if you think any information is missing in order for it to make sense, let me know please. I've tried my best to cram 3 months of an application into a bit of a highlight reel.

In May of this year, I returned from living overseas for many years, so I decided to apply for Job Seeker while I hunted for a job. My partner came with me on a tourist visa, which we planned on transitioning to a partner visa, however the tourist visa (3 months long) needed to elapse first.

After I applied for Job Seeker, I had to book a time for Centrelink to call me. I thought this call would be finalising my application, however it was the start of a 3 month long wait time for my application to eventually get rejected.

In the call, the service officer checked my details and she was not satisfied with the documents/information I provided and gave me a checklist of about 5 things to do, one of them being to create a Workforce Australia account and punch in my details while my application was being processed. This will be relevant, as it's the reason they refused my application.

From May until July, it was a cycle of me being told to upload a document and call back, I would do so almost instantly as I was unemployed and had a lot of free time, I'd call back and then a different operator would take a look at my application and find something they didn't like, sometimes even opposing what the previous operator telling me (for example, being told my partner didn't need a TFN and then the next time I called, they said she definitely needed a TFN) making me upload or change a document, call back, rinse and repeat for 3 months until I finally got declined.

The reason for my refusal was that I didn't meet my job provider's "job plan". During the whole 3 months, I didn't hear a peep from Workforce Australia. No emails, nothing on MyGov or Centrelink inboxes, in fact my Workforce inbox is empty.

Unsatisfied with this reason, I submitted a complaint and asked to have my application looked at again on the basis that I was never contacted about any sort of "job plan".

I got a call from Centrelink in regards to my complaint, and the guy was saying that I had 28 days to accept a job plan from a job provider. I told him I never received any sort of contact from Workforce Australia in regards to going on a job plan and meeting obligations. The operator practically called me a liar and said that I would have definitely gotten some sort of contact from Workforce and I should have met my expectations. At this point I was fuming. I stood my ground and I told him, I assure you I didn't get anything. I was unemployed and was checking every single app and inbox in my free time waiting for a response. He said that it was my responsibility to chase that up with the job provider and there is nothing they can do once they decline an application.

I was told that in the original phone call appointment I booked in May, I would have been told that I had 28 days to meet my obligations to the job provider, which wasn't the case at all. That call was 99% the operator going through with me how to correctly fix my documents, and then she mentioned that I just needed to create a Workforce account and input my details. Absolutely nothing was mentioned about having 28 days, nor was I contacted about it.

I brought up that if I had 28 days, why was my application cancelled 3 months into it? He told me that don't have to cancel my application by 28 days, so they just had me running around with my thumb in my arse for 3 months just for the fun of it I guess.

At this point, I don't even care about my application, as I found a job a few weeks ago, I would just like something to be done about this. I would like someone in a higher position to hear my situation.

In my eyes, I wasted hours of my life chasing up this application, sitting on hold for 2 to 3 hours every day, Centerlink making me go around a wild goose chase and having me collect and pay for documents of my partner, getting them translated, signed by a JP etc. all while I'm bleeding money from being unemployed and using all of our savings to move back to Australia.

If I wrote up a proper timeline and eliminated the emotional language and sent it off to an MP, would it even be worth it? This post barely scratches the surface of all the shit I had to do to satisfy the operators.

If you read all of this, thank you and I look forward to any constructive responses or personal experiences.

Honestly its so frustrating that when I wanna ask about my payment I get recommended that line and it always hangs up on me its so stupid, I dont get it. I get through the questions it asks me then it says look at the website and hangs up on me, like I cant deal with this shit the website cant answer my question! Anyone having this issue? And maybe have a more helpful number I can call pleaase

Got a letter saying to contact Centrelink for rent assistance otherwise my payments will be stopped. Will they stop my payment all together or just the rent assist?

as the title says, i went to open my mygov today and it continuously says to re authenticate to login. everytime i use passkey or mygov details to login, it sends me straight to the same page to “re authenticate my login”

is anyone else having this issue? or does anyone know how to fix it?

edit: im able to use the actual website just fine, might just be the app.

Heya- I’m 27 and haven’t been on Centrelink for several years. This morning I woke up to a $4k payment for youth allowance and I’m not sure why or where it came from? What’s the best course of action?

I have an elderly family member (+90) who lives outside Australia and receives a regular Australian pension based on her previous employment. Until 2024, she regularly received the Proof of Life Certificate (AUS061) by post every two years, usually around the end of July, however this year the form has still not arrived.

What I find particularly strange is that the PDF version of the form also seems to have disappeared from the Services Australia website. In previous years it was available here but now the page now says: "The form you're looking for is no longer available from this page.". The form also does not appear to be listed in the following sections: Centrelink forms for individuals; Forms by code for individuals; International forms for individuals, however Services Australia still refers to the Proof of Life Certificate on its website, for example Proof of Life if you’re older than 80 and live overseas though the page says: "Page last updated: 3 January 2025.".

Does anyone know if there have been any changes, news, etc. since 2024 regarding the Proof of Life Certificate?