When's the best time to call? Plan it in your time zone

How the planner works

Business Loan Hotline is staffed Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Melbourne time. That's easy if you're in Melbourne and surprisingly fiddly if you're not. Australia runs three standard time zones, two of them shift for daylight saving and three don't, and the line in the middle of it all is closed on Victorian public holidays that may not be holidays where you are.

The planner uses your browser's own time-zone data to convert our window into your local time for today and the next staffed day. It skips weekends and Victorian public holidays, and it adjusts on its own when daylight saving starts on Sunday 4 October 2026 and ends on Sunday 4 April 2027. Choose your state if the guess is wrong: someone in Broken Hill, for example, runs on South Australian time even though they're in New South Wales.

Then pick when suits you. If your preference falls outside our window in your time zone, the planner says so and offers the closest slot, rather than letting you ring a line that's closed.

What the call-prep card is for

The biggest difference between a quick, useful first call and a meandering one is whether you can answer the basics without hunting for them. The card gives you three things to keep in front of you:

• An opening line that says what the money is for, roughly how much and by when. Say that in the first thirty seconds and the specialist knows where to steer.
• A short list of numbers to have handy, matched to the reason you're calling. For a property-secured loan that's the address, who owns it and what's owing; for an ATO debt it's the balance and whether you're on a payment plan.
• Questions to ask back. A good lender call runs both ways. You should hang up knowing what the next step involves, how long it's likely to take and what it could cost.

For a deeper walkthrough, read what to say when you call and the questions a specialist will ask.

Our open window in your local time

Here's the same window laid out for the whole country. "Standard time" runs from early April to early October; "daylight saving" covers the rest of the year.

Where you are	April to October	October to April
Victoria, NSW, ACT, Tasmania	9:00 am – 5:00 pm	9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Queensland	9:00 am – 5:00 pm	8:00 am – 4:00 pm
South Australia, Broken Hill	8:30 am – 4:30 pm	8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Northern Territory	8:30 am – 4:30 pm	7:30 am – 3:30 pm
Western Australia	7:00 am – 3:00 pm	6:00 am – 2:00 pm

The quirks worth knowing: Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia don't use daylight saving, so their gap to Melbourne widens by an hour in summer. South Australia and Broken Hill sit half an hour behind Melbourne all year round because they shift with daylight saving too. Our call times by state section covers each one in detail.

Picking a time that works for you

A first call usually runs somewhere between five and fifteen minutes, depending on how much there is to talk through. Choose a time when you're not driving, not serving customers and not about to be interrupted. If you're on the tools all day, a slot at the very start of the window or on a lunch break is often easiest. From Western Australia, the early start means you can often ring before your own day gets busy.

If none of it lines up, that's fine too. The 60-second enquiry goes to the same specialists, and you can say when you'd like the call-back. Either way, there's no credit check when you first enquire, your details stay with one team, and the more accurately you describe the situation, the faster we can match it.