'We're screwed': the New Zealanders left stranded in Australia
It was more than a decade after Hana* moved to Australia from New Zealand that she discovered there wasn’t a social safety net to catch her.
The single mother moved to Queensland in 2008 for work, and has worked multiple jobs over the last 11 years to support her two children.
“Life looked great,” she says. “We’d go out for meals and buy clothes and lived a great life. But that was all taken away unexpectedly.”
Just over a year ago Hana witnessed a suicide while working as a social worker. She has been diagnosed with severe PTSD, depression and anxiety by psychiatrists and doctors, and has medical certificates confirming she will be unable to work in the near future.
But when she turned to Centrelink for support while waiting for an application for the disability support pension, Hana discovered that she was ineligible for virtually all forms of welfare, including sickness allowance, because she is in Australia on a special category visa (SCV), which allows New Zealand citizens to live in Australia indefinitely without obtaining permanent residency or citizenship.
For 14 months she Hana has been supporting herself and her 14-year-old son on just $109 a fortnight from the family tax benefit. She has been relying on friends, community groups and her church for support, and at times has been living on the streets.
“You cannot move, you cannot live, you cannot sleep when you’re on this journey to try to find help from Australia,” she says. “They don’t understand how heartbreaking it is.”
Hana is one of thousands of New Zealanders living in Australia who have fallen through the cracks left open by law changes in 2001 which stopped those on the SCV from accessing most forms of welfare. These people have been left in poverty and at risk of homelessness by two governments, each saying that the other is responsible for