Residence rules
You need to meet residence rules to claim Special Benefit.
On the day you claim, you must be in Australia. You must also be living in Australia and have 1 of the following:
- Australian citizenship
- a permanent visa
- a protected Special Category visa
- a certain temporary visa type, that includes Partner provisional or Temporary protection type visas.
If you’ve recently arrived as a resident in Australia, you may have to wait to get this payment. This is because there’s a newly arrived resident’s waiting period for Special Benefit. To get Special Benefit you can’t be eligible for any other income support payment.
You must continue to meet the residence rules for as long as you get Special Benefit.
Page last updated: 15 July 2021
This information was printed 10 September 2021 from https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/special-benefit/who-can-get-it/residence-rules. It may not include all of the relevant information on this topic. Please consider any relevant site notices at https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/site-notices when using this material.