Monday, May 04, 2009

Training and Learning Bonus for Postgraduate Scholarship Holders

As part Australian Government’s Household Stimulus Package, postgraduate scholarship holders are now also eligible for a one off payment of $950. More information can be found through centerlink:
http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/individuals/hsp_postgrad.htm

Since scholarships are tax free, many students missed out on the regular $900 package as no tax was paid during the 2007-2008 fiancial year. Hoorah PhD friends, you can now get $950 ($50 more than regular folk)! Only catch that's made some fellow PhD colleagues ineligible yet again is the $20,427 lower bound on other/non APA/non APAI/non NHMRC scholarships. The Melbourne University Scholarships Office is emailing/has emailed letters of proof to scholarship recipients.

As for me, I received my $900 a couple of weeks ago; I worked for 4 months at Google during the 2007-2008 financial year, bumping me into the range where I was eligible for the regular stimulus incentive. I don't think I can receive two packages. Although, it doesn't explicitly exclude me as I am quite sure I did not receive a Training and Learning Bonus or a Back to School Bonus payment. I tried calling centrelink but the English lines are constantly busy and it felt like I was put on hold indefinitely on the multilingual/Chinese language lines.

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