“That ICPA (Aust) requests that Services Australia reviews the “No reasonable access to school conditions” to better cater for travelling contractor families whose core business is located in geographically isolated areas."
The Northern Territory has a number of families who travel vast distances in isolated areas to conduct their business such as contract mustering and fencing/yard building. For these families it means living in remote locations for up to 11 months of the year. At present, to receive the Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) Allowance, these families must provide evidence of a minimum of five different working locations in remote areas to be considered transient and receive AIC. ICPA NT requests that these rules be made more streamlined to enable these families easier access to the AIC payments that they are entitled to.
These families are not meeting the geographically isolated test because what is listed as their ‘home’ with Centrelink is often in a semi-urban area - a house or shed block in a regional centre like Katherine, Alice Springs or Tennant Creek. In reality this is simply their postal address, their sense of security, storage and/or investment. Their HOME is often a travelling convoy - caravans or trucks - set up with all business, home and school. The location of this travelling home is in very geographically isolated locations across rural Australia.
At present they can only access AIC by the “No reasonable access to school” clause and its five essential criteria.
“You may also get it if your work requires frequent moves and if all of the following apply:
• You need to relocate the family for work.
• You need to work onsite and do not operate out of a base.
• You relocate at least 5 times a year for work.
• Your livelihood has an itinerant lifestyle, for example a shearer or fruit picker.
• If your child travelled with you, they would miss at least 100 school days at a local government school a year.”
The clause that is causing an increasing number of geographically isolated families to miss out is point 3 - “You relocate at least 5 times a year for work.”
Families have been asked to provide a minimum of 5 invoices to different properties/businesses to prove this clause. In the NT, especially in the Barkly Tablelands, the size of the properties are so huge and often owned by the same giant corporations, that it is feasible for contracting families to be out working for the majority of the year but not meet the 5 different properties/business rule. These families are not living at the station homesteads or out-stations - they are self-contained on a job site out in the wilderness. In reality, they are often “relocating” their home camp multiple times. Even though these may be 50km apart because they are on the same pastoral property, the applications are being rejected by Services Australia.
We are asking that greater flexibility to be made in assessing this criteria and increased understanding by Services Australia in the unique situations faced by these families.
This is an ever-growing need as the rural workforce is increasingly moving towards a contract base and whole families are increasingly working together in remote and very remote locations. Being able to access AIC is a requirement to receive the NT Isolated Student Assistance Scheme grants. These families are already going to amazing lengths to educate their children under difficult conditions and need to be supported.
