Kervin and Secretary, Department of Social Services (Social services second review)

This matter concerned an application for a Pension Bonus Payment (PB) under the Pension Bonus Scheme. The applicant, who had reached retirement age in 2005 and was enrolled in the scheme, stopped working in February 2019. He lodged a claim for the age pension and PB on 10 October 2019, which was outside the statutory 13-week lodgement period for a post-75 member. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) on first review affirmed the decision to disallow the PB claim as being out of time. The applicant sought a second merits review by the Tribunal.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether "special circumstances" existed to allow an extension of the lodgement period for the applicant's PB claim, pursuant to subsection 21(2) of the *Social Security (Administration) Act 1999* (Cth). This required the Tribunal to consider the applicant's interactions with Centrelink and his financial planner in February 2019, and whether these interactions constituted special circumstances that prevented him from lodging his claim within the prescribed 13-week period.

The Tribunal found that the applicant's evidence, supported by a letter from his accountant and a file note from Centrelink, indicated that he had visited a Centrelink office in Port Macquarie in February 2019 to initiate his claim. He was informed that he had not provided the correct paperwork and that further documentation would be sent by mail, which never arrived. The Tribunal accepted that the applicant genuinely believed he was "in the system" and that his application was in progress, attributing the delay to defective administration by Centrelink and a lack of clear guidance from his financial planner. The Tribunal concluded that these circumstances constituted "special circumstances" warranting an extension of time.

The Tribunal set aside the previous decision and substituted an order allowing the applicant to lodge his claim for the Pension Bonus Payment outside the prescribed period.