Centrelink denied carer payments to a family violence survivor while she looked after her teenage daughter during aggressive cancer treatment, arguing she was ineligible because of compensation from a horrific car crash seven years earlier, which the woman had used to buy a modest home.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal overturned the decision on Christmas Eve, saying the woman was clearly in “desperate need of funds” and the government’s stance risked forcing her to sell her home for a pittance to fund her caring responsibilities, an outcome it described as “appalling”.
In mid-2019, the Melbourne woman applied for a carer’s payment and allowance to allow her to look after her 15-year-old daughter, who was undergoing major surgery and an aggressive chemotherapy regime to treat cancer.
The woman was already struggling to make ends meet, relying on meals from the Salvation Army and regularly skipping meals to ensure her two children could eat.
She had also been subjected to family violence by her husband over many years.
“At one stage I had a broken nose and I had to tell her [her daughter] that I had hit something in the house on the way in [to hospital],” she told the tribunal.
But Centrelink rejected her application for the carer entitlements because of an earlier compensation payment following a serious car crash in 2012.
The woman was hit as she drove through an intersection, obeying a green light, to pick up her daughter from school. She was trapped in her car for 46 minutes, and suffered a crushed pelvis, fractured spine and broken ribs. She was in hospital for two months and needed a wheelchair for a further six.
Subsequent legal proceedings eventually produced a settlement of $600,000, money she used “wisely and not extravagantly”, the tribunal said.
She sold her existing family home because its proximity to the crash scene was contributing to her post-traumatic stress disorder, and used the proceeds to pay off her mortgage.
She then used $385,000 in December 2016 to buy a modest home on the outskirts of Melbourne, well away from the crash site.
The rest of the money was used to pay down debt and for a vehicle.
Her husband also used some of the money to feed his ice addiction, something the woman was too fearful to refuse, the tribunal heard.
Centrelink said the compensation payout precluded her from claiming carer’s allowance until at least April 2022.
The government’s guide to social services law suggests that the home was a “realisable asset” that could be sold to help support her through the preclusion period, without the need for carer payments.
The woman appealed to the tribunal, which found in her favour.
The case turned on whether special circumstances existed to justify lifting the preclusion period.
In reasons published on Monday, the tribunal found that the woman had been careful with her spending, not reckless, and accepted her evidence of financial hardship. The meals she received from the Salvation Army each week were often not enough, the tribunal heard, and she often went without food, usually breakfast and lunch about “three or four days out of a week”.
“In this connection, I must indicate that although the applicant has suffered a great deal in her lifetime – particularly in recent times – I did not in any way form a view that she was given to exaggeration or hyperbole,” senior AAT member Dr Damien Cremean said in his judgment.
“I accept her evidence in its entirety. Nothing asked of her in cross-examination affected her credibility. She is a truthful person, one who has suffered far too many misfortunes.”
The tribunal said that asking the woman to sell her home to fund her through the preclusion period would be an “appalling” outcome.
Not only would it be difficult to sell, given its semi-rural location and specially designed fencing and security system, but such a course would throw the woman and her children to the whims of the rental market.
The tribunal found that given her status as a single mother of two, with two dogs, she would struggle to find rental accommodation.
It found that her severe financial hardship alone was a special circumstance that warranted lifting the preclusion period.
“On the evidence before me, I am satisfied the applicant is in desperate need of funds,” Cremean wrote. “I regard her situation as severe. I cannot speak of the majority of social security recipients, but I can say that seldom in my experience have I encountered a situation as severe as that of the applicant.”
