Documents to enrol in Medicare if you're a permanent resident
You need to provide documents that prove your identity and residency.
You can enrol in Medicare if you have a permanent resident visa. You’ll need to give us both:
- a current passport or Immicard
- proof of permanent residency from the Department of Home Affairs.
We need these for each person you want to enrol.
You don’t need to get your documents certified.
Complete a Medicare enrolment form and mail or email it with your documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
If you don’t have these documents, tell us. We’ll talk to you about other options.
When you live overseas after you enrol
If you live overseas again for more than 12 months, you’ll no longer be in Medicare. You’ll need to enrol again when you move back to Australia.
You can call the Medicare general enquiries line to extend your enrolment. You’ll need to prove your identity over the phone.
If you can’t prove your identity over the phone, you can mail or email your Medicare enrolment form and supporting documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
You’ll need to give us both:
- a current passport for each person
- 2 documents per family proving you now live in Australia.
You don’t need to get your supporting documents certified.
You can also give us your old Medicare card numbers.
Proving you now live in Australia
You can prove you live in Australia by giving us either:
- 2 documents from Australia
- 1 document from Australia and 1 from where you last lived.
Documents from Australia | Documents from the other country |
---|---|
Proof of rental or lease agreement and gas or electricity account in the same name | Proof you sold your property |
Proof of purchase of property and gas or electricity account in the same name | Proof you ended your lease |
Proof of job | Proof you ended your job |
Proof your child is enrolled in school, childcare or university | Proof you moved household goods or furniture |
A statement from your bank | A statement showing you closed your bank account |
Proof of health, property or contents insurance | Proof you cancelled health, property or contents insurance |
You don’t need to get your documents certified.
Complete a Medicare enrolment form and mail or email it with your documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
If you don’t have these documents, tell us. We’ll talk to you about other options.
Page last updated: 11 August 2020
This information was printed 19 January 2021 from https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/subjects/documents-enrol-medicare-if-youre-permanent-resident. It may not include all of the relevant information on this topic. Please consider any relevant site notices at https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/site-notices when using this material.