With greater spending power than tourists from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the rapidly increasing number of Chinese tourist is expected to boost Australia’s tourism revenue further in the coming years. However, the sector’s overall growth may be thwarted by the severe skills shortage facing the hospitality industry.

A record 953,200 Chinese tourists visited Australian shores in the year to August, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nudging close to New Zealand’s 1.29 million. Coupled with the 212,400 travellers from Hong Kong, CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian predicts New Zealand may be bumped from the top spot in mid-2016.

He told The Australian that Chinese holiday makers are more economically valuable than their New Zealand counterparts because of their spending habits.

“I think the spending power of Chinese and Hong Kong tourists far exceeds what we see out of New Zealand,” he says.

“We’ve seen ongoing strength in incomes in China, a shift from a low income economy to a middle income economy and that’s probably the key driver, coupled with the fall in currency of the Australian dollar.”

According to the report, one of Australia’s busiest airports, Sydney Airport, saw a six per cent rise in international traffic in August, with travellers from China up 14.1 per cent and Hong Kong 10.2 per cent.

In response to a large number of enquiries from RMAs about whether to complete the OMARA's 'Self-Audit' survey, my answer is a firm 'NO'.  Do not complete the survey.

In their response to the enquiry from the Convenor of Migration Alliance, Liana Allan, concerning the OMARA 'Self-Audit' survey, the OMARA has said that it is 'greatly encouraged by the professionalism and integrity of those agents that have participated so far'.

This reply mirrors the emails sent out to those agents who have not completed the survey and clearly seeks to imply that in failing to complete the survey, the relevant agent is neither professional nor a person of integrity.

Clearly this is an attempt by the OMARA to intimidate members of the profession by persistently importuning them to do something which has no legal basis.

For the sake of clarity there is no doubt that the OMARA is charged generally with 'monitoring'.  That is not to say that there is a power to monitor. 

The OMARA asserts that the 'authority' is said to lie in section 316.  This is not the case.  Section 316 (1) deals with the functions, not the 'authority'.   The power to require a person to answer questions or provide documents lies elsewhere in the Act.

To assert otherwise and to assert some 'Authority' to ask migration agents to answer questions, by resort to Section 316, constitutes, at best, function creep by the OMARA.

Is it possible to get an injunction to stop the Department from deporting a client whose student visa has been cancelled? 

If the recent decision of Judge Manousaridis of the Federal Circuit Court in the case of Calava v Minister for Immigration (2015) FCCA 2525 (16 September 2015) is any indication, the answer to this question is that: “It will very likely be a hard slog to get an injunction, and your chances are pretty bleak!” 

The case illustrates that this is so even when the visa holder’s visa is cancelled by the Department at the airport when the visa holder is seeking to re-enter Australia, and the visa is cancelled based on a short interview that takes place at the airport only a few minutes after the visa holder is stopped at "customs".

Recent statistics indicate that some 87% of student visa applications are not made through registered migration agents. This could very well mean that unregistered education brokers in the currently unregulated education broker industry are lodging a significant number of applications.

It could be a key reason why this year there was a 30% rise in student visa cancellations. Typically, the department of immigration cancels between 8,000 and 9,000 student visas – this year there were 11,000 student visa cancellations.

The visas of 1793 Chinese students were cancelled making them the highest risk group. With 1160 visa cancellations, South Korean students were next, followed in number by students from India, Vietnam and Thailand.

Low-quality education providers, unscrupulous education agents, and the overly complex current student visa framework have been blamed for these large number of visa cancellations.

Only about 13% of 60,000 student visa applications were lodged by migration agents registered with the office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) according to recent figures released by the authority in its latest Migration Agent Activity Report.

Over 80 per cent of foreign language advertisements are openly offering wages well below award rates with many of these jobs blatantly advertised as "black jobs", a Fairfax Media investigation in conjunction with Monash University has revealed.

The study of 1071 job advertisements aimed at temporary foreign workers, largely from China, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, show the vast majority offer work either below the minimum wage or the award. Most of the jobs appeared temporary or casual and did not include penalties and loadings.

The study analysed websites like http://www.backpackers.com.tw/ , yeeyi.com and some foreign language Facebook pages.

“…hundreds of thousands of workers across the economy, in food courts, cafes, factories, building sites, farms, hairdressers and retail [are] being exploited on low wages and believing they have no power to ask for their rights,” noted the report published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The study found that it was common for jobs to be openly advertised at $10 to $13 an hour, significantly below Australia's legal minimum wage of $17.29 an hour. It also noted that many job ads did not reveal pay rates and could very well be even lower – as low as $4 an hour.