14 weeks. That is exactly how long Services Australia runs a separate set of rules for a surviving partner, and almost nobody knows the clock is running until it has already stopped. A second rule has already changed by the day after the death.

Here is what most people expect. A partner dies, the pension drops, and that drop is the loss. The drop is real. A pensioner couple on the full rate is paid one thousand eight hundred and ten dollars and forty cents a fortnight between them right now. A surviving partner on the full single rate is paid one thousand two hundred dollars and ninety cents. That is six hundred and nine dollars and fifty cents a fortnight, gone. Fifteen thousand eight hundred and forty-seven dollars a year. And from the twentieth of September this year both of those numbers move again, and the gap between them gets wider, not narrower.