Parental Leave Pay Newly Arrived Resident’s Waiting Period (NARWP).
Many Centrelink Government benefits will have either a 2 or 4 year newly arrived resident’s waiting period before becoming eligible to claim them.
From January 2022, many of those that are currently a TWO year newly arrived resident’s waiting period will increase to FOUR years.
The rules for Parental Leave Pay in 2021, are:
If you got your permanent residence visa, or specified visa subclass, on or after 1 January 2022, you will have the four year newly arrived resident’s waiting period. This applies to: Family Tax Benefit, Carers Allowance, Parental Leave Pay and Carers Payments.
If you got your permanent residence visa, or specified visa subclass, on or after 1 January 2019, there is a 2 year newly arrived resident’s waiting period for Carer Payment, Dad and Partner Pay and Parental Leave Pay.
If you got your permanent residence visa, or specified visa subclass, before 1 January 2019, there is NO newly arrived resident’s waiting period for Carer Allowance, Dad and Partner Pay, Family Tax Benefit or Parental Leave Pay.
What are the specified visa subclasses for Parental Leave Pay?
A statement from Centrelink confirms that people with a provisional partner visa subclass 309 or 820, may need to serve a waiting period for the Parental Leave Pay, starting from when you applied for the visa.
Note that is says “From the Date you applied for the visa”.
They might also take actually time in Australia into account, so it may be more relevant for the 820.
Paid Parental Leave or Parental Leave Pay.
There appears to be some confusion between Parental Leave Pay and paid parental leave, with many thinking that the Government (Centrelink) pays both.
Employees can get Parental Leave Pay (PLP) from the Australian Government and paid parental leave from their employer, according to fairwork.gov.au/leave/maternity-and-parental-leave/paid-parental-leave. Employer-funded paid parental leave doesn’t affect an employee’s eligibility for the Australian Government’s PLP Scheme. Employees can get both.
It is actually very easy to confuse the two terms.
Sources:
servicesaustralia.gov.au/…/parental-leave-pay/who-can-get-it
servicesaustralia.gov.au/…/newly-arrived-residents-waiting-period
servicesaustralia.gov.au/…/exemptions-newly-arrived-residents-waiting-period