Moving to Australia with a disabled child

The question most families ask first is whether a child's disability affects the visa. It can, and we are not permitted to advise you on it. Giving immigration assistance in Australia is regulated: it means using knowledge of migration procedure to help a particular applicant with their application, and doing it unregistered is an offence under section 280 of the Migration Act 1958. Describing a published rule is not that. Telling you how the rule lands on your child is.

So here is the published rule, once, and then we stop. Visa applicants must meet a health requirement, and the Department of Home Affairs assesses whether a condition would be likely to cost more than the Significant Cost Threshold. The Department states the current value of the SCT as $86,000, and says that estimated costs assessed above that figure mean the health requirement is not met. There are waiver provisions for some visa subclasses. Which of those apply to you, what the assessment would estimate, and how any of it should be approached are all questions for a registered migration agent.

We have no view on your prospects, we cannot form one, and anyone selling you confidence about it from a removals website is selling something. Our immigration services page explains how we refer this work out.

A shipment is a declaration of your own property. Equipment in a family home frequently is not — chairs, hoists, beds, standing frames and bath aids are often supplied on loan by a health service, a local equipment store or a charity, and remain that body's property while your child uses them. You cannot ship what you do not own, and the time to find out which items those are is before the packers arrive, not when a list is being checked.

We cannot tell you how any particular service treats its equipment, because it varies by provider and we have not verified a rule that holds across all of them. What we can tell you is that the question has a definite answer for every item, and the people who supplied it know it. Ask them, item by item, and get the answer in writing where the item matters.

This also changes what we quote for. A shipment that loses four large items at the last minute is a different volume and sometimes a different container, and finding out late is how a move becomes more expensive. Our volume calculator will tell you what the difference is worth before you commit to anything.

This is the part most families get wrong, and it is wrong in the direction that costs them money and worry. The rule people know about is the unaccompanied personal effects concession: household goods arrive free of customs duty and GST where the owner is arriving from outside Australia and has owned and used the goods overseas for the twelve months before departure. The Australian Border Force defines "used" as available for the owner's intended purpose on a continuing basis.

Children outgrow equipment. A chair reissued in the spring, a bed changed after a growth spurt, seating remoulded last year — none of that has been owned and used for twelve months, so it fails the concession. Families reasonably conclude they are facing duty and GST on the most expensive thing in the container.

That conclusion skips the second rule. Section 13-10 of the GST Act makes an importation non-taxable where the goods would have been GST-free had they been supplied within Australia. The Border Force states it plainly: goods that are imported and would have been treated as GST-free if they had been supplied within Australia are non-taxable importations. And medical aids and appliances are GST-free supplies under section 38-45 where they are listed in Schedule 3 of the GST Act or the GST Regulations, are specifically designed for people with an illness or disability, and are not widely used by people without one. Wheelchairs and accessories associated with them are item 106; the Regulations add postural support seating.

Put together: a listed aid does not need the twelve-month concession to escape GST, because it was never going to attract GST in the first place. Its age is irrelevant to that question.

Sea freight to Australia runs around eight to twelve weeks door to door depending on where you start, and that figure is the one families underestimate most. For a household it is an inconvenience measured in camping chairs and borrowed plates. For a child who depends on a moulded seat, a hoist, a profiling bed or a feeding pump, it is a care plan with a hole in the middle of it, and no amount of packing well closes that hole.

There is no clever shipping answer. There are three honest options, and which is right depends on the item rather than on the move, so the decision is made item by item before anything is booked.

Ship it and bridge the gap, if the receiving service can lend an equivalent for the period and your child can manage with one. Replace it on arrival, if the item is near the end of its life anyway and you would rather land with something new than nurse an old one across the world. Or send it by air as a small separate consignment, which costs considerably more per cubic metre than sea freight but is measured in days — and for one irreplaceable seating system, that is sometimes the whole answer.

Decide this before you accept a quote, because it changes the shape of the job. Our moving checklist builds the dated plan around whichever you choose, and our move process guide explains what we need from you at each stage.

Australia inspects at the border for biosecurity risk, and there is no special category for mobility or medical equipment. It is assessed as personal effects, which means the risk is what has been on it: soil, seeds, plant matter and animal material, caught on wheels, castors, frames, foam and fabric. A chair used daily in a garden or on a beach is a more interesting item to an inspector than one that has never left a carpet.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is clear that cleaning before packing does not guarantee a pass — goods that have contacted soil, plants or animals can still be inspected, and where contamination is found the consignment may need treatment and a second inspection. That is time, and on equipment that time is the thing you cannot spare.

The department's own method guidance is worth following: it advises against high-pressure water, which drives material further into places it is then harder to remove from, and recommends dismantling where you can so that every surface can be reached and seen. For any item you are unsure about, BICON is the authority on what conditions apply, and the honest answer is to check it rather than assume equipment is waved through.