any contributory parent march applicants 183

Hi Gill,

Hi again, Pauline

No harm at all in phoning the various doctors and getting the prices at this stage. The prices do vary, but not by a huge amount. What varies more is the time it takes to see the Panel Doctor so if there is a choice in your area, that is worth asking about.

However, if you are going to do the meds in the UK, then I wouldn't do them just yet. I'd suggest waiting till September or so.

If you have already sold your house, do you have any particular reason for hanging about in the UK? (Or have you gone out to Oz during the wait?) If you have sold but are renting in the UK, then unless you want to do that, I'd suggest going out to Australia on a sub-clbutt 676 tourist visa and doing your waiting out there instead.

That's what we did with my Mum. She didn't want to shiver through a winter in the UK, bored stiff and pining for her only grandchildren, who are in Oz. To cater for that, I made simultaneous applications - to the POPC for the CP visa and to DIMA in London for a 676 tourist-visa to hold the fort. Since at the time the POPC was saying that they were taking abut 9 months to process CPV applications, I asked them to let Mum have 8 unbroken months in Oz on the 676 visa, because she MUST leave Australia before the CP visa can be granted. You can ask for a 12 month stay in Oz on the 676 but that didn't seem necessary to me. DIMA couldn't have been more helpful about either of the visas - they really have bent over backwards to help us and I am immensely grateful to them for that.

We already knew - but the CO mentioned it yesterday - that all that the applicant has to be is "outside Australia" when the visa is granted & evidenced by a local DIMA office in the place concerned. From Perth, Singapore & Bali both fit that bill. Mum is due to leave Australia on 10th August, arriving in the UK on the 11th. We do not want to have to bring that date forward, and it is Mum's own wish to return to the UK for what I suspect will be the last time, since she has siblings here whom she loves, plus my father is buried in the UK. There will undoubtedly be tars before this is over and Mum is esconced in Australia, but I still think it is worth doing and so does my sister. I suspect that I'll be taking holidays in Australia from there on instead of Mum doing all the long-haul hiking around!

If you are already in Australia, I wouldn't waste time talking to doctors in the UK. I would be asking the POPC whether your meds can be done in Australia instead, because I can see no reason why that shouldn't be possible. In the case of parents who are eligible to apply for Contributory Aged Parent visas from within Australia, the meds have to be done by Health Services Australia before the application is made. Apart from beinng the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth for visa-purposes, the HSA doctors are also the MOC for the purposes of deciding whether people are sick-disabled enough to qualify for the various state-paid Disability Pensions out in Australia, so there must be HSA doctors pretty well everywhere, I should think. If they can do the meds for a C Aged P, then why can't one of them do the meds for you too?

I think they probably can but I didn't ask the POPC about the possibility because we wanted to talk things over with a Panel Doctor before deciding whether to make Mum's application at all, and since she was in the UK at the time, I took her to the one nearest to me. For Mum, we were prepared to get the meds done twice if we had to, but I could NOT have an old dear of 85 worrying herself stupid insisting, "Gill, you are mad! There is no way Australia will accept me, hobbling around on a zimmer-frame as I have to!" We had to put a stop to that sort of worrying, obviously, and I primed the Panel Doctor about Mum's fears in advance. He was fantastic. Really focussed on what she can still do instead of fussing about the trivia that she can't still do by herself. (An old dear of 85 shouldn't be expected to carry a rubbish sack out to the bin by herself anyway, he told her!) He gave her confidence in the idea of the application, which worked WONDERS!

So it is very much horses for courses, according to what the applicant wants and what is in the applicant's own best interests. The applicant is the central person in the whole thing. The rest of us are here to serve all of you in whatever ways that each of us can according to my view of the whole thing.

I would caution against making buttumptions that the meds can be done in Australia. I do NOT have confirmation of that from the POPC, and if any reader is thinking of trying this, I think it is VITAL to agree it with the POPC in advance of the applicant setting foot in Australia.

But since you have sold your house, I think there are lots of options for you to think about should you wish to. However, DO NOT send capital to Australia yet. There will be no tax on it if you take the capital into Australia when you migrate, but there will be if you jump the gun with the dosh.

Good luck & best wishes

Gill