Centrelink finally coughs up Carers Allowance

It took over three months since putting in the application. The delay was due to mistakes on the part of Centrelink. Never mind that we were supposed to be using it to survive, after all that's what welfare is supposed to be there for. So over that time it's just been lurching from one debt crisis to the next without nearly enough to get by on, living well below the poverty line if not for emergency super funds I got out. What do people do in such a situation if they can't go into credit card debt? Or more card debt? Or even more card debt? Or if they've no super to help?

Centrelink's reply to such dilemmas is always the same. Like they turn on a tape player in the back of their head. "You will be back paid everything that you are owed when the forms are finalised". How the hell does that help someone who's got nothing?

Anyway the Carers Allowance is just under $120 a fortnight, not subject to tax or income tests, paid to the carer (David) looking after the care-ey (me). I said to David the other day that he'd be looking at a bit of back pay once they finally get their act together. I wasn't wrong. This is the back pay going in tomorrow. We feel like printing it out and framing the bloody thing:

BTW it was only after another compliant we made through their online complaints thing about the continuing delay; had been two weeks since they said it'd be in there in a day or two. Amazingly they rang only hours after the email was sent. 

This, combined with the wait David had to even get Newstart, makes a grand total of about $1,600 in back pay that he's gotten from Centrelink in the last couple of months. Or to put it another way, has had to wait in abject poverty for whilst they fucked around. Fuck, no wonder we ended up in $crisis.