Income support for carers and people with disability 

This article states Commonwealth law. Aged and disability care law is usually taught as service regulation — who may deliver care, to what standard, under whose supervision. Income support sits underneath all of it, and a client's most pressing question is often not about services at all¹.

Three payments matter here, and they are commonly confused: the disability support pension, paid to the person with disability; the carer payment, an income support payment for the carer; and the carer allowance, a supplementary payment for the carer. All three are in the Social Security Act 1991 (Cth), in different Parts.

A note on currency and on scope. The provisions here were read from AustLII's consolidation, which does not state a compilation number; confirm currency on the Federal Register before relying on a section. No rate or indexed amount is stated. The review pathway for a rejected claim is governed by the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth), which was not examined for this article — see the articles on merits review and the Administrative Review Tribunal for the framework, and go to the Administration Act for the provisions.

Disability support pension: four cumulative limbs

Section 94(1) sets the qualification test. Read it as four requirements, all of which must be met.

Paragraph (a) requires a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment. That is the entire diagnostic requirement, and it is deliberately broad.

Paragraph (b) requires that the impairment be of 20 points or more under the Impairment Tables. This is where the work is done. The Tables are a separate instrument, not part of the Act, and points are assigned by table according to function rather than diagnosis. A claim rarely fails on paragraph (a); it fails on paragraph (b).

Paragraph (c) requires either a continuing inability to work, or that the Secretary be satisfied the person is participating in the supported wage system. Note the structure: participation in the supported wage system is an alternative to inability to work, not evidence of it.

Paragraph (d) requires the person to have turned 16.

Paragraph (da) then adds a participation requirement in a defined case: broadly, where the person is under 35 or is a reviewed 2008–2011 DSP starter, the Secretary is satisfied they can do work of at least 8 hours per week at or above the relevant minimum wage that exists in Australia — expressly, even if not within the person's locally accessible labour market — and, where they have dependent children, the youngest is 6 or over.

That phrase repays attention. The test asks whether work of that kind exists in Australia, not whether it exists where the claimant lives. A claimant in a regional area cannot answer it by showing there is no such work locally.

The structural point to take from s 94 is that the medical question and the legal question are different. The impairment is a threshold; the Impairment Tables and the inability to work are the operative tests. A student who reasons from the severity of a condition, rather than from points and work capacity, has not applied the section.

Carer payment: constant care, assessed by tool

Section 198(1) states that a person qualifies for carer payment if the requirements of the section are met. Those requirements are cumulative and each one has failed a real claim.

Constant care, personally provided. Section 198(2) requires the person to personally provide constant care. Where they are the only person providing that care, the care receiver must be a disabled adult assessed and rated under the Adult Disability Assessment Tool with a score of at least 25, calculated on a total professional questionnaire score of at least 10. Section 197(1) defines care to include attention and supervision, and defines a disabled adult as a person aged 16 or more with a physical, intellectual or psychiatric disability likely to be suffered permanently or for an extended period.

So the ADAT score, not the diagnosis, is the operative fact. Where a claim is refused, the dispute is very often about the professional questionnaire component rather than about whether the care receiver is disabled.

Care in a private residence. Section 198(3) requires the care to be provided in a private residence that is the home of the care receiver. This is a narrow requirement, and it is where residential aged care meets income support: care delivered in an approved residential care home is not care in the care receiver's private residence.

Residence of the carer. Section 198(4) requires the carer to be an Australian resident, subject to a narrow exception for scheduled international social security agreements that entered into force on or before 24 December 1992.

The care receiver's own means. Section 198(5) requires the care receiver to be an Australian resident, to pass the income test under s 198A, and either to pass the assets test under s 198D or to be the subject of a decision under s 198N. Subsections (6) and (7) disapply these for a higher ADAT score adult in defined circumstances — principally where that adult is already receiving a pension or benefit.

This is the feature students most often miss. Carer payment is means tested on the care receiver, not only on the carer. A carer of modest means can be refused because the person they care for has assets.

Two further points. Sections 198AA to 198AC preserve qualification in certain short-term circumstances where the requirements would not otherwise be met — the respite and hospitalisation provisions. And s 198(9) contains a neat deeming rule: where a disabled adult is caring for their own dependent child and another person supervises that care, the supervisor is taken to provide the care personally.

Carer allowance: a different payment, a different test

Carer allowance is not a smaller carer payment. It is a supplementary payment with its own qualification provisions.

For a child, s 953(1) qualifies a person where the care receiver is a dependent child of the person, is an Australian resident, and, because of the disability from which the care receiver is suffering, receives care and attention on a daily basis from the person or their partner.

For an adult, s 954(1) qualifies a person where the care receiver is an Australian resident; is a family member of the person, or a person approved in writing by the Secretary; has been assessed under the Adult Disability Assessment Tool with a score of at least 30, on a professional questionnaire score of at least 12; and receives care and attention on a daily basis from the person because of the disability.

Compare the two carer payments directly, because this is the comparison an exam question turns on:

• Carer payment requires constant care; carer allowance requires care and attention on a daily basis. Daily is a lower standard than constant.
• Carer payment requires an ADAT score of at least 25; carer allowance for an adult requires at least 30. The threshold for the supplementary payment is the higher of the two, which is counter-intuitive and worth remembering.
• Section 954 is expressed to apply where the adult is cared for in a private home of both the adult and the carer — the carer must live there too. Section 198(3) requires only that the residence be the home of the care receiver.
• Carer allowance for a child under s 953 uses no ADAT score at all; the child assessment provisions in ss 197B to 197H and the Disability Care Load Assessment (Child) Determination do that work.

Section 197(1) supports both: it defines the categories of sole care child, combined care child and multiple care child, and it extends parent to a person granted guardianship of the child under a law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory. That last definition is the bridge between this Part and the State guardianship legislation covered elsewhere in this subject.

The relationship to the NDIS and to aged care

None of these payments is a service. The disability support pension, carer payment and carer allowance are cash payments under the Social Security Act 1991; NDIS supports are funded under the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth), and aged care services are funded by subsidy under the Aged Care Act 2024 (Cth). The eligibility tests are separate and the decision-makers are different.

The practical consequence is that qualification for one establishes nothing about another. An NDIS participant is not thereby qualified for the disability support pension: the pension turns on Impairment Table points and work capacity, which the NDIS access criteria do not measure. Advise on each separately.

Applying this in a problem question

1. Identify whose payment is in issue — the person with disability, or the carer. This decides which provisions apply.
2. For disability support pension, take s 94(1)(a) to (d) in order and treat paragraph (b) as the substantive test. Consider paragraph (da) only if the age or starter criteria are met.
3. For carer payment, work through s 198 as a checklist: personal constant care, ADAT score, private residence that is the care receiver's home, carer residence, and the care receiver's income and assets.
4. Before concluding a carer payment claim fails on a temporary absence, check ss 198AA to 198AC.
5. For carer allowance, choose s 953 or s 954 by whether the care receiver is a child or an adult, and apply the higher ADAT threshold and the shared-home requirement in s 954.
6. Cite the Impairment Tables and the ADAT as instruments, and state no rate without the current instrument.

Self-check

• Have I distinguished the three payments rather than treating carer allowance as a lesser carer payment?
• Have I reasoned from points and functional capacity rather than from diagnosis?
• Have I applied the means test to the care receiver for carer payment?
• Have I checked whether the care is provided in the right home, for the right payment?
• Have I confirmed the compilation of the Act I am citing?