Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday advised people with frozen funds to go to Centrelink:
Tens of thousands of Australians, many of them retirees, are now unable to get immediate access to their capital after AXA Asia Pacific, Perpetual Investment Management and Australian Unity suspended withdrawals from some funds.
Treasurer Wayne Swan responded last night by advising people adversely affected to go to Centrelink to see if they were eligible for income support.
The answer might be that Centrelink doesn’t have anymore idea if you qualify than Swan seems to have.
Anyone who has had anything to do with Centrelink knows that getting simple and consistent answers from this under-funded, over-stretched bureaucracy can be very difficult.
Some talkback callers earlier this week were suggesting that Centrelink can’t help unless there is a liquidation, just because funds have been frozen doesn’t qualify you for anything.
I searched for ‘frozen funds’ on the Centrelink site and got a nil return.
