My mum is 74 and considering moving to Australia. I am her only remaining relative and I have Australian Citizenship. She would live with me and my husband once here. I have looked at the various options and looked through various posts on here and I see two ways forward: either non contributory or contributory aged parent visa. She would come here on a tourist visa and apply within Australia so that she could remain here while the visa is processed. I understand that the non contributory parent visa has a waiting list so long that it would ever be granted within her remaining lifetime, however, I have noticed from other posts that even the contributory aged parent visa seems to have a 10 year queue list now (or longer). So one question is, what is the point of apply for a contributory visa given her age? Would she get access to anything different to the non-contributory visa during the wait period for her application to be processed? Also, when is the medical normally requested? Is this immediately on queuing of the application or during the application wait period, or once it has come out of the queue for processing? Finally, would mum still have access to Medicare given the reciprocal health agreement with the UK pending the application being processed?
Any advice would be much appreciated.