| Puls Polonii is hereby publishing a letter from the Dept. of Families,Housing, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs to Alex Gancarz, President, Council of Polish Organisations in the ACT.
Dear Mr Gancarz. As promised, I am writing to provide some information about the proposed social security agreement between Australia and Poland. We are due to meet with Polish officials in Warsaw in the week beginning 30 June 2008 and hope to finalise negotiations at that time.
As you are aware from Budget publicity the proposed Agreement would cover Australian and Polish Age/retirement pensions. It would allow people living in Australia to claim Polish pensions and to receive those payments in Australia, and vice versa. It would also allow people to 'totalise' relevant periods in both countries for the purpose of meeting minimum qualifying periods, for example, it would allow people with Polish 'insurance' periods to count those towards meeting Australia's ten year residence requirement for Age pension.
When the Agreement starts, claims for Polish Age pensions will be able to be lodged with Centrelink in Austalia and, similarly, claims for Australian Age pensions will be able to be lodged with ZUS in Poland.
The Agreement will also facilitate business between Australia and Poland by including provisions that eliminate the need for compulsory contributions to both country's schemes when employees are sent to work temporarily in the other country. So Australian employees who are temporarily sent to work in Poland will remain covered by the Superannuation Guarantee (SG) scheme, and Polish employees sent to work in Australia will remain covered by Poland and their employer will not have to make SG contributions for them.
As with Australia's other social security agreements, the Agreement will not cover health care.
We hope to be in a position to sign the Agreement before the end of this year. When the Agreement is signed it will become a public document and we will provide more information, to the Polish community especially, at that time. After signing, the process in Australia is for the Agreement to be tabled in Parliament and subject to scrutiny by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.
We would be happy to provide you with an update after our meeting in Warsaw.
International Branch
Department of Families, Housing
Community Services and Indigenous Affairs | 
