Centrelink turns on senile seniors

If you are in contact with your nominee, please have her advise us of her new address or please advise if she is no longer your nominee.

Please fill in the enclosed original form in pen. Sign, date and return it to this office [note there are 2 office addresses given, Surfers Paradise and Mitchelton, adding confusion] within 28 days after the day on which this letter is given to you.

All questions should be answered. Strokes, ticks or dashes cannot be accepted as answers except where specified.

This is an information notice given under social security law.

Please contact this office if you have difficulty filling in the form.

If you do not reply or contact us within 28 days after the day on which this letter is given to you it may result in the suspension of your age pension.

The next page of the form is more specific: “If you do not reply to this letter within 21 days your payments may be stopped.” The final page of the form demands that if one has a partner, your partner must also sign and date your completed form. Since my relative’s husband died in the same nursing home in 1997 while she was also there, one must assume Centrelink believes (or its computers do) that a demented nursing home resident will acquire a new partner. Fortunately such threats and idiotic concepts were reaching non-seeing eyes and an uncomprehending mind.

But it raises the question: is this what social security for our aged pensioners has come to in 10 years? From a right to the age pension as an eligible citizen, down to a begrudged payment, granted only if you don’t use strokes, ticks and dashes.