Following the Migration Institute of Australia’s (MIA) EGM ‘wipe out’ on Friday afternoon, 8 September at 4pm in Sydney, the National President of the MIA suddenly resigned on Sunday 10 September.

Some of you may recall that I resigned from the Migration Alliance Committee a few months back without providing an explanation.    I would now like to provide that explanation, put forward a few of my insights and ideas, and then offer a proposal for the way forward.

My resignation from the MA committee

I resigned from the Migration Alliance committee for two reasons. 

The first reason was that I was being intimidated by Mary-Jane Jones, the then State Director of the ACT/NSW of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) for my association with Migration Alliance, and that by association with Migration Alliance, the DIBP would not engage with me. 

Ms Jones also made it quite clear to me on a telephone call that the DIBP would not send in speakers to Legal Training Australia (LTA) CPD events whilst I had an association with Migration Alliance.  Ms Jones was disparaging of Migration Alliance, in particular that Migration Alliance would publish offensive and negative commentary on its blog. 

Ms Jones said that she would not send DIBP staff to LTA events whilst it still had association with Migration Alliance, as she feared for her staff’s safety. I did try to explain to her that MIA members are also Migration Alliance members and that there is a large overlap of dual members. I therefore questioned her reasoning behind the DIBP's attendance at MIA's events.

I also found it odd that a Senator for NSW could attend our events, and also the Head of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), but not staff of the DIBP. Not once in the history of Migration Alliance has there been a safety issue at any of our CPD events or conference.

I think that the explanation given by Ms Jones does not stack up.

Nevertheless, in order to get access to DIBP speakers for CPD purposes, I agreed on the phone, and subsequently in writing that I would resign from the Committee. One word springs to mind. Duress. Documents gathered under FOI from the DIBP tell a more sinister story, akin to boycott of Migration Alliance, files on me and other Committee members of MA, and directions through to DIBP management from the top down, not to deal with Migration Alliance. Why? Probably because we are not lap dogs to the DIBP.

I also questioned why the DIBP wasn't running free information roadshows for the migration advice profession, rather than forcing agents to pay the MIA to access government information.

The second reason I resigned from Migration Alliance’s committee was because I made an application for the recently advertised position of CEO at the MIA. I did not want there to be a conflict of interest when I applied, by being on the Board of a competing membership association in the same profession.

I applied. I was invited to an interview by the MIA’s professional recruiter. I attended an interview, which lasted approximately an hour. In the interview I made it abundantly clear that my reason for applying was to fuse the two associations (MIA and MA) to create one peak professional association. I explained about the history of bad blood between the two organisations and my experience at successfully running LTA. I explained that I had founded and have been running MA. In my opinion, I am more than skilled and qualified for the position, and would need to take a pay cut to achieve my objective; become the position of CEO and merge the MIA and MA. The recruiter said he would call Angela Julian Armitage that afternoon to let her know that he had interviewed me and then let me know whether the board would consider me for the position. He rang. Angela said no. He called me. End of story. It went nowhere. I was shut out.

MIA's EGM last week

Angela Julian-Armitage motioned to me to come to over to her outside the meeting room of the MIA's EGM on Friday afternoon at around 3:50pm.

She said, 'why are you doing this to me?'.

I said, 'the profession needs help'.

She responded with, 'I am having an Aston Martin delivered tomorrow. Do you really think I need this sh*t?'.

I said, "Angela you really could have accepted my application for the position of CEO".

Angela responded, "You didn't even apply properly'.

I was so stunned I did not reply but walked off.

I went into the EGM meeting room but was ejected from the room as I was not a MIA member. I was also not allowed to be an observer.

Insights and Ideas

My hope is that the profession can join together as one.

My plan is to galvanise the joint members of the MIA and the MA and initiate an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) in the coming weeks. Proxies will be sought for the required 100 member votes.

The aim of the EGM will be to dispense of the current board of the MIA through a ‘vote of no confidence’ motion. Other motions will also be put to the membership, such as allowing me to join the MIA as a member. Whilst he was the Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Lane wrote to me advising me that my application to join the MIA had been refused, but with no explanation.

What has become clear is that Migration Alliance and our proxies were the primary reason that all four of the MIA’s recent motions were defeated. Other MIA members carried their own proxies in line with ours, voting down the motions.

The way forward for the migration advice profession

Given it is now clear that Migration Alliance is in the hearts and minds of the voting members of the MIA, may I suggest that NOW is a good time for the two organisations to join forces, one way or another? The current Migration Alliance committee fully support my proposal of fusing the MIA and the MA.

I would appreciate comments and feedback.

In Good Faith

Liana Allan

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