Movement Records for a Carer Visa (Formerly Form 1359)

International movement records are the Department of Home Affairs' record of every date you arrived in or left Australia since 1981, and you request them through the Department's online Request for international movement records form, which replaced paper Form 1359. For a Carer visa applicant, those dates settle 3 questions: whether an AFP police certificate is needed, what visa history an 836 rests on, and when the citizenship clock can run after grant.

What to attach to the request

A current, unexpired photo ID: a passport, driver licence or other government-issued photo card. Old passports are not needed.
Proof of any change of name, such as a marriage certificate, change-of-name certificate or divorce order.
For someone else's records: their signed written consent and their current photo ID, plus your own.
For a migration agent or lawyer: a copy of Form 956 serves as the written consent.
An English translation by a NAATI-accredited translator of any document not in English.
Files in PDF, JPG or PNG, up to 3 MB each and 15 MB in total, each attached separately.

What are international movement records?

International movement records are the Department of Home Affairs' record of your arrivals in and departures from Australia from 1981 to now. The Department's requesting travel records page says the records show:

your departure and arrival dates in and out of Australia from 1981 to now
whether you were inside or outside Australia for a certain period
how many movements are on record for the period
your name, date of birth, gender and country of birth
the travel document (passport) numbers used
the Australian port of arrival or departure
flight or vessel details
the visa subclass and expiry date at the time of travel.

The records "will not show the countries you travelled to or from"; those come from the authority of each country you visited. Records from before January 1981 are held by the National Archives of Australia. One request covers every passport you have held, current and old.

Why would a Carer visa applicant need them?

A Carer visa applicant needs movement records for 3 things: counting time for police certificates, proving the visa history an 836 rests on, and later counting residence for citizenship.

Police certificates. An AFP National Police Certificate is needed if you spent 12 months or more in Australia in the last 10 years since turning 16, and the records give that total to the day.
The 836 visa history. An 836 applicant must hold, or have held, a substantive visa, and one who no longer holds a visa must apply within 12 months of the relevant day under criterion 3002 in Schedule 3 to the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth). Form 80 also asks for 10 years of overseas travel (Part E) and your Australian visa history (Part J).
Citizenship after grant. The residence requirement limits time outside Australia, and the records count it exactly.

The sponsor's own records can help too, by showing the years lived in Australia that the Department's "settled" policy looks at, which is usually at least 2 years of lawful residence.

How do you request movement records now that Form 1359 is retired?

You request movement records now that Form 1359 is retired by completing the Department's online Request for international movement records form. The old Form 1359 PDF link now returns an access error, and the Department's form-listing entry for movement records opens the online form (checked 24 September 2026). The subclass 836 page still names Form 1359, but requests now go through the online form.

Open the online form and confirm you have read the privacy and security statements.
Choose who the request is for: yourself, another person who has given consent, or a child under 18.
Consent to email contact and give the address the records will be sent to. The form says that without this consent "You cannot use this form", and points to the Department's Global Service Centre instead.
Enter your details, including any other names you have used.
Attach the documents in the checklist above. The Department's document checklists page says: "You don't need to have any documents certified unless we ask you for these."
Choose the reason, "Australian Visa application", and submit.

A request for another person without their consent, or for a person who has died, goes through a Freedom of Information request instead. No fee appears on the form.

How long does a movement records request take?

A movement records request has no published processing time from the Department, but Australian Privacy Principle 12.4 requires an agency to respond to a request for a person's own information within 30 calendar days. The Department's movement-records pages give no service standard (checked 24 September 2026). The 30 days come from Schedule 1 to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), as the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's APP 12 guidelines explain at paragraph 12.66. The Department has not said whether it handles movement-records requests under that principle. The records arrive by email.

Requesting them before you fill in Form 80, or well before a Department deadline, leaves time for a slow reply.

Which police certificates do your travel dates trigger for a Carer visa?

Your travel dates trigger an AFP National Police Certificate when your time in Australia adds up to 12 months or more in the last 10 years since you turned 16, and an overseas certificate for each other country where your time reaches the same 12 months. The movement records give the Australian total exactly. They show time outside Australia but not where it was spent, so the totals for other countries come from passport stamps or the other country's own records.

Once the totals are known, the issuers, the 12-month validity and the rule that certificates go as originals are set out in the guide to police certificates for an Australian visa.

How do movement records help with citizenship after a Carer visa?

Movement records help with citizenship after a Carer visa by giving the exact days abroad that the residence requirement counts. The Department's citizenship page for permanent residents asks for 4 years' lawful residence immediately before applying, including 12 months as a permanent resident, with absences of no more than 12 months in total in the 4 years and no more than 90 days in the last 12 months.

Permanent residence starts on the date of grant for an 836 and on the date of first entry for a 116, so the same trip abroad counts differently for each. When to apply, and how each subclass starts the clock, is covered under Carer visa to citizenship.

How long should you keep movement records for a Carer visa?

Keep movement records for a Carer visa until you become a citizen, which means through the queue (the Department's estimate for a new Carer application is 12 years, as at 31 May 2026) and at least 4 years after grant. The Department keeps the underlying records, so a fresh request brings them up to date at any stage.

A copy printed for a paper application is a supporting document like any other. The Department has not said whether a printout of the emailed records must be certified; sending a certified copy follows the general rule for paper applications.

Visa history matters most for an onshore applicant, and the rules on who can apply for an 836 turn on the substantive visa held. The records feed the forms in the 8 steps to paper lodgement, and every other step is set out in the Carer Visa Australia guide.

A registered professional makes a grant more likely

Dates that do not match between Form 80, Form 47OF and the Department's own movement records look like wrong answers, and a missed 12-month count means a missing police certificate. A registered migration agent or an Australian legal practitioner checks the travel history against the records before lodgement, which makes a consistent file and a clean character check more likely. Neither can guarantee the outcome.

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