International Social Security Agreements

Question

Senator RUSTON: Sure. It would just be interesting to know, of those 75,000, how many of them, in the lion's share of those people, are people in Australia-where we have a reciprocal arrangement with another country and they just happen to decide that they want to live in Australia. A breakdown of the difference between the two would be really helpful. Mr Flavel: We can do that. Senator RUSTON: If it's possible in that to understand the breakdown of the payments-if they're the lion's share of the major pension or what sort of pension they are. Mr Flavel: All agreements include age pension. It's just that some of the older agreements did cover things like DSP and carer payment but not working-age payments. Senator RUSTON: What would be interesting then, on that basis, is: what number of that 75,000 are age pension payments, and what are the other categories? Mr Flavel: The other categories would be relatively small because, since 2004, it's only been age pension. As I said, there are a range of different agreements, struck over different decades. Older ones did have broader provision. Every agreement since 2004 has been restricted to just an age pension based agreement. Senator RUSTON: So it's probably a fairly small number. Mr Flavel: Yes.

Answer

Please see attached answer.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• DSS SQ26-000718.pdf (opens in a new tab)