• Standard Waiting Period
• Liquid Assets Waiting Period
• Income Maintenance Period
• Lump Sum Preclusion Period

The Standard Waiting Period applies to all new recipients of Newstart Allowance, Sickness Allowance and Youth Allowance. This is additional to the other wait periods that may apply.

The Liquid Assets Waiting Period (LAWP) applies to persons claiming Newstart Allowance, Sickness Allowance and Youth Allowance. This is based on the amount of liquid assets a person has at the date of terminating employment.

Liquid assets include cash, bank accounts, shares, managed investments and termination payments from employers - anything that can be readily moved into cash. Termination payments which are rolled over into super are not included in the calculation of the liquid assets waiting period.

The maximum LAWP is 13 weeks. If you have been thrifty and the money is still there after 13 weeks your benefit starts anyway, the LAWP is not extended, though of course if you have enough, the assets test may cut off your payments entirely.

The threshold for liquid assets is $2,500 for singles, $5,000 for couples. The relevant divisor for the LAWP is $500 for a single, $1,000 for a couple. The number of weeks in your wait period is equal to your liquid assets, divided by the divisor, rounded down to the nearest whole number.

A word of caution: they do check with the banks to make sure you haven't stashed your money somewhere to make it disappear. Do not take your redundancy payment and stick the whole lot into your mortgage, Centrelink will count it anyway and for the next 13 weeks you will have absolutely nothing to live off. (Actually, more than 13 weeks since you have the other waiting periods as well).

The Income Maintenance Period (IMP) applies to Newstart Allowance, Partner Allowance, Sickness Allowance, Youth Allowance, Parenting Payment, Widow Allowance and Mature Age Allowance.

The IMP has the effect of deeming a level of income on a person for a period of time, commencing from the day the person received their benefits.

The IMP is determined by the number of weeks of leave payments received by a person on termination of employment. So if you have been paid 10 weeks of sick leave and 4 weeks of long service leave or annual leave, maternity leave or rostered days off, Centrelink will treat that as continued wages for 14 weeks, hence no benefits.

If you roll over sick leave and rostered days off they are excluded from the calculation of the IMP, so most of the time it is a good idea to roll them over.

The Lump Sum Preclusion Period applies to lump sum payments of compensation. A lump sum compensation payment for the purposes of the preclusion period is a payment in respect to lost earnings.

Partners are not affected by the lump sum preclusion period for compensation payments received on or after 20th of March 1997.

Age pension is affected if compensation is received on or after 20 March 1997 and the provisional commencement date of payment of age pension is on or after the 20th of March 1997.

Before you calculate the Lump Sum Preclusion period you need to first calculate the compensation component.

If the case was settled by consent, the compensation part is deemed to be 50% of the figure.

If full judgement is made on the case, the compensation part is the amount quantified by the judge or arbitrator for past and future loss of earnings.

To calculate the preclusion period, divide the compensation amount by the divisor.

The divisor is the single pension disqualifying limit, this is indexed in March and September each year. Right now in August 2001 the single pension disqualifying limit is $1,131.50 per fortnight. Probably by the time I put this on the 'net the number will have been indexed already and will have changed. As for all these numbers throughout the social security FAQ you can find the latest ones at Centrelink's web site.