Desparate to control the misleading and fraudulent conduct of some education brokers in Australia, the government is looking into measures to make educational institutions directly liable for the behaviour of their brokers.

Education brokers are not required to be registered unless they intend to provide immigration assistance. To provide immigration assistance, a person must register as a migration agent with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (Office of the MARA).

It is not always easy to separate the two. If you browse the websites of some education brokers, you will find some boasting of how quickly they have managed to obtain student visas for their clients. Yet nowhere on the site is there any indication that they are registered for providing migration advice.

The big issue is how exactly do the authorities weed out brokers dealing in fraudulent student visa applications or misleading and misguiding students about the streamlined visa program and thus potentially damaging the reputation of Australia’s $16 billion dollar education industry.

Regulating education brokers has been an issue the government has been grappling with for a while, according to a report in The Australian. Currently there is an ad hoc system whereby brokers have the option of undergoing voluntary training which some education institutions have put down as a requirement for brokers wanting to represent them. The overriding legislation governing broker conduct however is the very general Australian Consumer Law.

From 31 January 2015 the tribunals will only accept applications for review made on M1, M2 and R1 paper forms with design date 10/14. 

Applications lodged on forms with any other design date on or after 31 January 2015 will be deemed invalid and will not be accepted by the tribunals.

The electronic forms generated by the tribunals’ online application system will remain valid. 

Backpackers enticed to come to Australia with the promise of sunshine, adventure and fair wages are instead falling prey to unscrupulous businesses. DIBP needs to do a lot more to equip working holiday visa holders with information on their rights.

The Fair Work Ombudsman says that too many backpackers are being ripped off. It recently commenced legal proceedings against a Tasmanian business owner for allegedly underpaying 5 backpackers in a brazen scheme targeting backpackers desperately trying to fulfil their sc417 visa obligations.

“We will put to the court that five young backpackers from Italy, the UK and Japan were paid as little as the equivalent of $1.35 an hour when they were entitled to between $22 and $32 an hour, that’s depending on their shift and therefore were collectively underpaid almost $43,000,” Craig Bilstein of the FWO office told the ABC.

According to the ABC the statement of claim filed with the courts accuses the business owner of ‘promising to sign-off on an Italian woman’s 88day regional stint requirement in 2013. He then allegedly paid her $272 for 4 weeks work. And when Fair Work inspectors came knocking, the [the business owner] told them the staff were guests or volunteers rather than workers.”

Penalties for a breach of work conditions are severe with fines up to $10,400 for individuals and $51,000 for a company per contravention, say Craig Bilstein of the FWO office.

So far little has been done to help vulnerable entrants to Australia like backpackers and students to deal with these abuses. The sc417 visa allows those aged between 18 and 30 from 19 countries to work in Australia for 1 year with the prospect for some to extend it to another year if they work for 88 days in a regional area in specific industries, like agriculture and construction.

Online ads seeking to exclusively employ migrants holding or capable of obtaining an sc457 visa or other temporary work visas are making their rounds on various job sites, according to a Fairfax media report.

There are reports that the Victorian anti-discrimination watchdog has rejected calls to conduct an inquiry into whether such ads were in breach of equal opportunity law, indicating that it’s a matter for the courts.

However Federal Employment Minister Eric Abetz has warned that employers advertising for foreign workers exclusively over Australian candidates must be referred to authorities.

"Skilled foreign workers provide an important supplement to the Australian workforce where there is a shortage of workers, however Australian workers always have first preference," he said in a media report.

Some of the ads posted state as follows, "I am looking for someone who is interested in getting a 457 visa in hospitality”; “ ... I can sponsor two cooks and one manager [for] the restaurant,"; and "highly prefer" candidates seeking work visas.”

Assistant Immigration Minister Michaelia Cash told Fairfax that companies sponsoring 457 visa-holders were subject to strict sponsorship obligations, which included a commitment to non-discriminatory employment and having to demonstrate that suitable Australian candidates were not available.

Praveen Goyal (pictured below) has created an entity called 'ME Alliance', also known as 'Migration and Education Alliance of Australia'.  

Migration Alliance members have written in and called us to ask us whether the ME Alliance has anything to do with Migration Alliance Inc.  It is on that basis that we have found it necessary to release this information.

Migration Alliance is in no way associated with ME Alliance.

By way of a background, the ME Alliance headed up by Praveen Goyal approached Migration Alliance Inc last year, and if my memory serves me well, perhaps even the year before that.  Mr Goyal attempted on numerous occasions to negotiate with me and Christopher Levingston to establish a new association.  The offer presented to Migration Alliance was, strangely, an almost-replica model of Migration Alliance Inc so naturally we did not proceed.