Yahoo Finance Centrelink, welfare recipients to get $250 cash payment by tomorrow
Centrelink and welfare recipients can expect to see an extra $250 cash payment land in their bank accounts from today.
The payments, announced as part of the 2022 Budget, were designed to help low income earners with the rising cost of living.
Services Australia announced that it had started paying eligible Australians the one-off payments.
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Anyone receiving a welfare payment, including pensioners, veterans and concession card holders, will get an automatic $250 payment.
All payments are expected to be made by the end of the week.
“We’ll pay it into the same bank account as we pay your eligible income support payment or concession card,” Services Australia said.
“We’ll send a letter to let you know we’ve made the payment.”
Rising cost of living
This comes after new inflation data revealed just how much prices for goods have risen since January.
The consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.1 per cent in the March 2022 quarter and 5.1 per cent annually, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The most significant contributors to the rise in the March quarter CPI were new property prices (+5.7 per cent), fuel (+11 per cent) and tertiary education (+6.3 per cent).
"Continued shortages of building supplies and labour, heightened freight costs and ongoing strong demand contributed to price rises for newly built dwellings,” head of prices statistics at the ABS Michelle Marquardt said.
"The CPI's automotive fuel series reached a record level for the third consecutive quarter, with fuel price rises seen across all three months of the March quarter.
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