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Australians living in Australia
If you’re an Australian citizen and you’ve never been enrolled, you’ll need to give us either your:
- Australian passport
- birth certificate.
To prove you live in Australia, you’ll also need to give us 2 of these documents dated within the last 6 months:
- sale agreement to buy a property, plus a gas or electricity account in your name
- lease agreement to rent a property, plus a gas or electricity account in your name
- evidence of employment
- evidence that your children are at childcare, school or university
- evidence of private health insurance, bank accounts, or property or contents insurance.
You don’t need to get your documents certified.
If you can’t give us the documents we need, call us on the Medicare program line. We’ll talk to you about other options.
Australians living overseas
If you move back to Australia after more than 5 years overseas, you can re-enrol in Medicare. You don’t need to visit a service centre.
What you need to provide
To re-enrol in Medicare you’ll need to give us both:
- a current passport for each person
- 2 documents that prove your family live in Australia dated within the last 6 months.
Proving you now live in Australia
You can prove you live in Australia by giving us either:
- 2 documents from Australia
- one document from Australia and one 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 you have a job | Proof your job ended |
| Proof your child is enrolled in childcare, school or university | Proof you moved household goods or furniture |
| Proof you have a current bank account in Australia | Proof 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.
If you can’t give us the documents we need, call us on the Medicare program line. We’ll talk to you about other options.
Indigenous Australians
If you have standard identity documents, mail or email them with your Medicare enrolment form to Medicare Enrolment Services. You can also enrol online through myGov.
If you don’t have standard identity documents, you can use a referee instead. You and your referee need to fill in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Medicare enrolment and amendment form. The form says who can be a referee.
You can mail, email or take your form to your local agent or access point or service centre. You can also call the Indigenous Access Line if you need help with the form.
Read more about Medicare services for Indigenous Australians.
How to enrol
You can enrol in Medicare either:
- online through myGov
- by completing a Medicare enrolment form.
Enrolling online
You can enrol online in Medicare as either an individual or a family through myGov and track the progress.
To enrol online you and your family members need to:
- live in Australia
- have a current passport or ImmiCard
- have visa details from the Department of Home Affairs.
If you want to enrol as a family, we need details and identity documents for any children under 15.
If you want to include someone 15 or older, you need to give that person your application number.
They need the number to give us their details and identity documents through their own myGov account to complete their Medicare enrolment.
If you have a myGov account sign in and enrol in Medicare. If you don’t have a myGov account you need to create one.
If your application is approved, we’ll contact you with your next steps. We’ll also send you your Medicare card in the mail to the address you gave us.
Enrolling with a form
If you can’t enrol online, complete a Medicare enrolment form. You can mail or email it with your supporting documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
If you email us, include ‘Medicare enrolment’ in the email subject line.
Make sure your documents are:
- in PDF, JPG, PNG, GIF or BMP format
- not password protected, or in a WinZip or RAR file
- no larger than 5MB for each document
- no larger than 10MB in total for all the documents.
Contact numbers available on this page.
Medicare program
Use this line if you need help with a claim, enrolments, ordering a new card or have a Medicare general enquiry. Let us know if you need an interpreter and we’ll arrange one for free.
Indigenous Access Line
Use this line if you're an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian and need help with a Medicare service or payment.
There are other ways you may want to contact us.