Natstar I was saying you CAN get benifits based on the fact that it is unreasonable for you to live at home, because you have to study so far away.
If that fails, however, you cannot claim to be independant based on what you earned because you havnm't been out of school for long enough.
and I agree with mamboeng... centrelink is so full of stuffups, and you constantly have your pay changed or cancelled for no reason. It is stupid how they cut you off completely when your parents start to earn more, because you end up worse off! That happened to me... my boyfriend went from $12k trainee wage to 40k fully paid, so they cut me off completely... I think
a/ this is a different situation to parents because you can't expect your boyfriend to support you like your parents would and
b/ our combined income went down, because he pays so much tax, and centrelinke won't give me any money
oh and don't always expect the right advice from people working at centrelink
My fav storey would be when a <pregnant> friend walked in to find out about parenting payments. The worker (poor english speaking) asked her how old she was and when she said 16 said : 'oh disgust!' and told her she wasn't eligable for payments, when she very clearly was and shes on them now
I've gotten heaps of conflicting info from different people too...