A twelve week trip to see family in Europe costs you nothing in pension. A twenty seven week trip, for someone who arrived in Australia at forty, can permanently reduce their payment by around a quarter for as long as they stay away.
Both of those statements are true, and neither is obvious from the paperwork. Age Pension portability is one of the better designed parts of the social security system, in that the payment genuinely does follow you overseas. It is also one of the least explained, and the rules changed on 20 September 2026 in a way that helps some travellers and costs others.
This guide sets out what happens at each point of an absence, who the twenty six week rule actually affects, what changed in September 2026, and what to sort out before you go.
What changed on 20 September 2026
The headline change concerns the Pension Supplement, the fortnightly top up that helps with utilities, phone, internet and medicine costs.
| Before 20 September 2026 | From 20 September 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Temporary travel | Full supplement for 6 weeks, then reduced to the basic rate | Full supplement for 12 weeks, then stops entirely |
| Living overseas permanently | Reduced to the basic rate | Stops as soon as you leave |
| Already living overseas | Basic rate continued | Stops from 20 September 2026 |
If you take trips of between six and twelve weeks, you are better off than you were. If you spend long periods abroad, or you live overseas, you are worse off. The change was announced as part of the 2026-27 Budget and the reasoning given was that the basic supplement was designed to help with GST related costs incurred in Australia.
Around 88,000 people already living permanently overseas were affected from the commencement date. If that includes you or a family member, the reduction has already taken effect.
What happens as an absence gets longer
Different components of your entitlement have different clocks, which is the main reason people are caught out. A single trip can cross several of them.
| Time outside Australia | What happens |
|---|---|
| Up to 6 weeks | Everything continues as normal. |
| After 6 weeks | The Energy Supplement stops. Your Pensioner Concession Card cancels. |
| After 12 weeks | The Pension Supplement stops for temporary travel, under the rules from 20 September 2026. |
| After 19 weeks | A Commonwealth Seniors Health Card cancels, and a fresh application is needed on return. |
| After 26 weeks | Your base rate may become proportional to your Australian Working Life Residence. Rent Assistance generally ceases for extended absences. |
The base Age Pension itself continues to be paid throughout. That is what portability means. What changes is the amount.
The twenty six week rule and Australian Working Life Residence
This is the provision that surprises people most, and it is the one worth understanding before booking anything long.
Once you have been outside Australia for twenty six weeks, your base rate is recalculated by reference to your Australian Working Life Residence, or AWLR. That is the number of years you were an Australian resident between age sixteen and Age Pension age, capped at thirty five.
If your AWLR is thirty five years or more, your base rate is unchanged. If it is less, you receive that proportion of the rate. Someone with twenty eight years of AWLR receives twenty eight thirty fifths, or eighty per cent.
Who this actually affects
If you were born in Australia and lived here through your working life, your AWLR comfortably exceeds thirty five years and this rule does nothing to you. It bites almost entirely on people who migrated to Australia as adults, or who spent long periods working overseas.
| Arrived in Australia at age | AWLR to age 67 | Proportion of base rate after 26 weeks |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | 35 years (capped) | 100% |
| 32 | 35 years | 100% |
| 40 | 27 years | 77% |
| 48 | 19 years | 54% |
| 55 | 12 years | 34% |
This matters a great deal in a city like Adelaide, with substantial communities who arrived in Australia in their thirties and forties and who now spend extended periods with family in their country of birth. A four month visit is fine. A seven month visit is a different financial proposition entirely, and the difference between those two trips is not intuitive.
Time spent overseas during your working life does not count towards AWLR, which is why the calculation sometimes comes out lower than people expect.
A grandfathering provision
In most cases your rate will not change under this rule if you were receiving Age Pension or another Australian social security payment while living outside Australia on 1 July 2014. If that describes your situation, check it specifically rather than assuming the general rule applies.
Concession cards run on their own clocks
The Pensioner Concession Card cancels once you have been temporarily overseas for six weeks. That is a much shorter window than the pension itself, and it is easy to overlook because the card is not something you use while abroad.
The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card has a longer window, cancelling after nineteen weeks outside Australia, but with an important difference: it does not come back automatically. A fresh application is required on your return, and you have to satisfy the eligibility test again at that point.
For anyone relying on concessional medicine pricing, this is worth planning around, including making sure you have adequate supplies and knowing what to do on arrival home.
The two year rule for returning residents
This one catches a specific group very hard.
If you have been living overseas and you return to Australia to live, you can claim the Age Pension without a waiting period, provided you meet the qualification rules. But if you then travel outside Australia within two years of returning to live, your payment may stop.
The practical consequence is that someone who comes home, is granted the pension, and then goes back for an extended visit eight months later can find their payment ceases. If you have recently returned to Australia to live, do not book long travel without checking your position first.
International social security agreements
Australia has social security agreements with more than thirty countries. Depending on the agreement, these can allow periods of residence or contributions in the other country to count towards qualifying for a payment, allow claims to be lodged from that country, and affect how a pension is paid to residents there.
If you have worked in another country, or you are planning to move to one, the relevant agreement can materially change your position, sometimes for the better. It is worth checking whether an agreement exists with your destination before assuming the general portability rules apply.
Tax, once you stop being an Australian resident
Portability of the pension and tax residency are separate questions, and the second one is frequently overlooked by people relocating permanently.
If you cease to be an Australian resident for tax purposes, you no longer have access to the tax free threshold, and the seniors and pensioners tax offset is generally not available to non-residents. Different rules apply to different types of income, and many of Australia’s tax treaties allocate taxing rights over pensions between the two countries, so the outcome depends heavily on where you go.
This is genuinely complex and it is not something to work out from a website. Anyone contemplating a permanent move should take tax advice in both countries before leaving. Our guides on how much you can earn in retirement without paying tax and minimising tax in retirement deal with the resident position, which is the baseline you would be leaving.
Your superannuation is a separate question again. Account based pension payments, preservation and the treatment of a fund with a non-resident member all need checking before departure rather than after. Our guide on account based pensions covers the domestic mechanics.
Medicare and health cover
Medicare eligibility depends on residency, so a permanent departure eventually affects it. Australia has reciprocal health care agreements with a number of countries, but these cover immediately necessary treatment rather than acting as comprehensive health insurance, and they do not exist everywhere.
For long trips, travel insurance for older travellers is expensive and frequently excludes pre-existing conditions, so read the policy rather than the brochure. For permanent moves, local health cover in the destination country is usually the main event and should be priced before the decision is made, not after.
If you hold Australian life or income protection cover, moving overseas can affect it too. Our guide on maintaining Australian life insurance cover while living overseas sets out what to check.
Three common situations
The six week holiday
Nothing changes. Tell Centrelink you are going, keep your contact details current, and enjoy it. This is the most common trip and it has no financial consequence at all.
Wintering abroad for three or four months
Under the rules from 20 September 2026, a trip of up to twelve weeks keeps your Pension Supplement at the full rate, which is better than it used to be. Past twelve weeks the supplement stops for that trip. The Energy Supplement stops at six weeks and your Pensioner Concession Card cancels at the same point, so factor both in.
Critically, a trip of this length stays well inside twenty six weeks, so the AWLR rule does not apply. For most people this is the sweet spot, and the planning point is simply to know your dates.
Retiring abroad permanently
This is a different decision entirely. The Pension Supplement stops on departure. After twenty six weeks the base rate becomes proportional to your AWLR, which for a mid-life migrant can mean a substantial and ongoing reduction. Concession cards go. Medicare eventually goes. Tax residency changes. Access to Australian health care, and to family support if your health declines, becomes a real question rather than a theoretical one.
People do this successfully and happily. It simply needs to be modelled properly, on the actual reduced pension figure rather than the current one, and with a plan for what happens if circumstances change. Our retirement planning checklist is a reasonable starting framework, and the questions in understanding the real financial commitments of retirement apply with more force when you are a long way from home.
Before you go
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- Tell Centrelink. Report your travel dates before you leave, through myGov or Services Australia. Failing to do so is the single most common cause of payment problems.
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- Work out your AWLR if you migrated to Australia as an adult, and know what your proportional rate would be. Do this before booking anything approaching six months.
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- Count your weeks against every threshold, not just the one you have heard about. Six, twelve, nineteen and twenty six all do something different.
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- Set up myGov and link Centrelink before you leave. It is considerably harder to do from overseas.
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- Confirm how you will be paid. Payment continues to an Australian bank account by default, and Centrelink International Services can arrange payment to an overseas account.
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- Update your contact details, including an Australian contact who can reach you.
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- Check the destination. Whether an international social security agreement exists, and what health cover you will have.
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- If you returned to Australia to live within the last two years, get your position checked before travelling at all.
There are provisions for people who cannot return as planned because of unforeseen circumstances such as serious illness, a public health crisis or a natural disaster. If that happens, contact Centrelink International Services rather than assuming your payment will simply stop.
Where Professional Advice Adds Value
Most overseas travel on the Age Pension needs no advice at all. A holiday inside twelve weeks is a matter of telling Centrelink your dates.
Where it genuinely matters is at the margins. Working out an AWLR figure for someone who arrived in Australia mid-life, and translating it into what their pension would actually be after twenty six weeks away, changes how a long trip looks. Modelling a permanent move on the reduced pension rather than the current one, alongside the tax residency change, the loss of concession cards and the health cover cost, is the difference between an informed decision and a hopeful one. And for people who have recently returned to Australia to live, checking the two year rule before booking prevents a genuinely serious outcome.
At Money Path we also spend time on the question that sits underneath all of this, which is whether the plan works if things do not go well. Retiring abroad on a reduced pension, a long way from family and from the health system you have paid into all your life, is a decision that should be stress tested rather than assumed. Our guide on applying for the Age Pension covers the starting position, and how the income and assets test works explains the rate you would be taking with you.
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep getting the Age Pension if I move overseas permanently?
Yes. The Age Pension is portable and continues to be paid while you live outside Australia. What changes is the amount. The Pension Supplement stops when you leave, and after twenty six weeks your base rate may be reduced in proportion to your Australian Working Life Residence.
How long can I travel before my Age Pension is affected?
Under the rules from 20 September 2026, you keep the full Pension Supplement for up to twelve weeks of temporary travel. The Energy Supplement stops after six weeks and your Pensioner Concession Card cancels at the same point. Your base pension rate is generally unaffected until twenty six weeks.
What is Australian Working Life Residence?
It is the number of years you were an Australian resident between age sixteen and Age Pension age, capped at thirty five. After twenty six weeks outside Australia, your base rate is calculated as your AWLR divided by thirty five. Someone with twenty eight years receives eighty per cent of the rate. If you have thirty five years or more, there is no reduction.
What changed on 20 September 2026?
The Pension Supplement rules. Temporary travellers now keep the full supplement for twelve weeks instead of six, but it stops entirely after that rather than dropping to a basic rate. People who move overseas permanently lose it on departure, and those already living overseas had it stop from that date.
Do I keep my Pensioner Concession Card while overseas?
No. It cancels once you have been temporarily outside Australia for six weeks. A Commonwealth Seniors Health Card lasts longer, cancelling after nineteen weeks, but it does not come back automatically and requires a fresh application on your return.
I recently moved back to Australia. Can I travel again?
Be careful. If you returned to Australia to live and were granted the Age Pension, your payment may stop if you travel outside Australia within two years of returning. Check your specific position with Services Australia before booking anything.
Do I need to tell Centrelink before I travel?
Yes, and it is the most important practical step. Report your travel dates before you leave, keep your contact details current, and make sure your myGov account is linked to Centrelink beforehand, because setting that up from overseas is much harder.
Taking the next step
If your trip is under twelve weeks, tell Centrelink your dates and stop worrying about it. If it is longer than that, or you are thinking about living overseas, the number worth knowing before anything else is your Australian Working Life Residence. It determines what your pension looks like on the other side of twenty six weeks, and it is much better known before you book than discovered afterwards.
General advice warning: This article contains general information only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not tax advice. Social security rules and payment rates change regularly, including through indexation each 20 March and 20 September, and the Pension Supplement portability rules described here changed from 20 September 2026. Confirm your position with Services Australia, and with Centrelink International Services for any extended absence. Anyone considering a permanent move should also obtain tax advice in both countries. You should consider whether the information is appropriate for you and seek personal advice from a licensed financial adviser before acting.
