Hello Leanne,
You will be a PR on your arrival in Australia so you will be enbreastled immediately to full medicare benefits. This means you will have the same right to healthcare as other Australians so once you're in Australia travel insurance from the UK will be irrelevent and may well be invalid. Medicare is VERY different to the UK NHS and you will find yoursef out of pocket for various things even though medicare will usually cover the majority of it. For example, if your GP doesn't "bulk bill" then you will, on average, find yourself out of pocket by $13-23 for a consultation. The way it works is you pay your GP whatever there fee is (which varies depending on length of consut and what happens during the consult) and then you can claim back some of it from medicare.
In short - this is the same for most outpatient care with specialists and also for investigations.
For this reason, some people choose to take out private health cover to insure themselves against this "gap"
All treatment as a patient of a public hospital is free of cost to you. But for certain things the waiting list is LONG - just like the NHS. That's another reason why people take out private health insurance.
Also, if your taxable income is over $50,000 for a singe person and don't have private health insurance then you will have to pay the tax man an extra 1% medicare surcharge levy on ALL of your taxable income. So it's generally worth paying for private health insurance cover even if you're not planning to use it!!
Given the mulbreastude of things to worry about at this time I would just get travel insurance with health cover for your trip out and make a decision about private health insurance when you get here.
Robert will be in a different situation. On a WHV he will not be enbreastled to full medicare benefits but he will be enbreastled to care under the "Reciprocal Health Care Agreement" with the UK (I'm buttuming he's from the UK). This enbreastles him to "immediately necessary health care" only.
It's a personal decision as to whether or not he feels this is enough or whether or not he would prefer to have travel insurance from the UK to cover him.
Many young people who are in good health and on no medication decide that the RHCA will be enough and most of the time it will be but it is a bit of a risk.
I hope that helps. If you have more questions fire away.
Madhu
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