Australian Immigration Daily News

This story comes vourtesy of Tanaya DAS and Karl Konrad (RMA).

Migration Alliance has previously run stories about Singapore Oil and Eddy Kang on this website:

The following has just been received by Migration Alliance from the MRT-RRT:

Dear Community Liaison Network members

I am pleased to provide the community liaison update for August 2014 in this new format.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome some of our new members to the community liaison network and to thank our current membership for their continuing support in attending community liaison network meetings.

As you know we concluded the first round of community liaison network meetings for 2014 in May 2014.  The minutes from those meetings are available on our website in the community liaison archives.  I encourage you to review these minutes as they provide information on a range of relevant topics, including the RRT Practice Direction.

Any feedback you would like to provide about these updates is welcome. If you have any suggestions or comments, please forward them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Announcement Stakeholder Engagement Statement The tribunals have developed a new Stakeholder Engagement Statement. The Stakeholder Engagement Statement sets out our commitment to providing a professional and courteous service to review applicants and other persons who come into contact with the tribunals. The tribunals aim to treat everyone with courtesy, respect and dignity, as outlined in our Service Charter.

Announcement Caseload report to 31 July 2014 The tribunals have begun the 2014-15 financial year on a positive note with over 2,000 decisions made in July.  MRT decisions were slightly below lodgements providing a 91% clearance rate for the month, while almost three times as many RRT decisions were made as lodgements received, giving a clearance rate of 272% for the RRT for the month.

Announcement Member recruitment The tribunals welcomed 17 newly appointed members in July.  Each member has been appointed for a three year term. Their appointments are expected to boost the tribunals’ decision-making capacity, adding initially to the focus on protection and partner caseloads over the next 12 months.

Report Online lodgements Since the implementation of the tribunals’ online lodgement facility, over 5570 applications have been lodged electronically, with more than 60% of applications now being lodged online.

Kind regards,

Kay Ransome
Principal Member

If you have any queries or feedback please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
For further information about the MRT-RRT, please visit our website.

Professional-Development-Ingram-update.pdf

See above for the new legislative instrument which prescribes the Practice Ready Programme as a mandatory activity (see the attached IMMI 14/038) as at yesterday's date 14 August 2014.

We are gathering more information at the moment and will write a full story and summary on this change this afternoon.

Interestingly there was no announcement about this change from the Office of the MARA yesterday.

The following news is just in from the Victorian Government:

Welcome to the Victorian Government's Agent Alert for migration agents and representatives.

Members might be interested in a complaint that I was copied into today.  The complaint has gone in to the DIBP.  Names have been removed for confidentiality reasons and replaced with XXXXXX.  This is not the first complaint of its kind:

I would like to make a complaint about a case officer who I believe has failed to treat my client with fairness, open and reasonable which has resulted my client to fall into unfavourable circumstances (see below).

The case officer, XXXXXXXXXXX (Position Number: 60002844) refused a nomination application (Nomination TRN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX) on 15 July 2014 and withdrew the corresponding subclass 457 visa (TRN: XXXXXXXXXXXX) on the same day without giving the client the opportunity of 28 days to comment on information for a Temporary Work(Skilled) (subclass 457) commonly known as IMMI Natural Justice letter which are normally given to other subclass 457 applicants.