In a world first move, Australia is looking to trial passport-less travel. Virtual passports or ‘cloud passports’ may soon allow Australians to breeze through international airports without having to deal with the sometime mindless enquiries of immigration officials over their traditional passports.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced earlier this week that the idea of ‘passport – less’ travel was presented to and well received by a number of international leaders as part of the Australia’s InnovationXchange project.

A 'cloud passport' would work by storing the identity and biometric data of holders online so it could be checked digitally, thus eliminating the need to carry a physical copy.

One obvious benefit would mean Australians no longer would need to worry about losing or having their passports stolen. Statistics from the department of foreign affairs and trade (DFAT) show 38,718 Australian passports were reported lost or stolen in 2014-15.

The idea of document-free travel emerged from the InnovationXchange project. The project encourages DFAT employees to contribute creative ideas using their experience and expertise on the job. The $140 million InnovationXchange project was launched in May in collaboration with American publisher and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Ms Bishop said the ideas emerging from the projects were 'innovative, challenged the status quo and had the potential to transform the way we do business globally.

Australia’s ‘deportation laws’ laws target non-citizens with a 'substantial criminal record'. The ABC has discovered that the strict law has been applied to a father of five including a newborn, for driving without a license.

A Lebanese-born Sydney man with five children has spent most part of last year in detention awaiting deportation for driving without a licence according to an ABC report.

Fouad Arja moved to Sydney in 2010, married an Australian woman, and was given permanent residency last year. His wife Laila Ismail told the ABC that on three occasions, he made a stupid decision and drove without holding an Australian licence. He was caught, convicted and given a 12 month suspended sentence.

This was effectively enough to trigger deportation proceedings against him regardless of his family circumstances. After serving four months of the 12-month suspended sentence, Mr Arja wasn't able to return to his wife and children - instead he was taken into immigration detention, reports the ABC.

His Lawyer, Willem Oostdyck told the ABC that the Government should not be applying the law so broadly and should be dealing with such matters on a case-by-case basis particularly considering the impact on the family.

“The impact on the family is quite severe; the Government is breaching the Conventional Rights of the Child. The convention very clearly states, Article three states, that you know, the child has a right to a parent or parents, a father and a mother. And by you know implementing this very heavy-handed Section 501, the convention is breached and the children are going to be impacted and the father is going to be impacted” said Mr Oostdyck.

Mr Oostdyck says Fouad Arja's family only has one avenue for appeal, and that's to take the case to the High Court.

More applicants are starting to scrutinise DIBPs decision-making process given the dramatic spike in FOI requests to the department of immigration (DIBP) over the last year according to statistics from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

DIBP received 18,851 FOI applications over the year - an increase of almost 7,000 from the previous year. This is equivalent to 51 FOI applications a day and four times more than the agency with the next highest number of requests, the Department of Human Services, reports The Canberra Times.

The surge in requests comes as the FOI laws have been labelled "pernicious" by Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd and at a time when the Coalition government is seeking to disband the OAIC.

This year, Mr Lloyd said the laws had gone further than intended and were being used to pursue information about newsworthy issues of the day rather than personal information.  

However, according to the OAIC, most requests to the top three agencies were from members of the public seeking access to documents containing their own personal information. 

In what is probably a first for the migration advice industry, the Convenor of the Migration Alliance, Ms Liana Allan, has been announced as a finalist for this year's Businesswoman of the Year Award.

In an industry controlled and stifled by authorities with little or no business sense, the Migration Alliance was formed in 2009 by Ms Liana Allan to provide the passionate and trusted leadership missing in the migration advice industry.

Since inception, the aim of Migration Alliance has been to properly represent Registered Migration Agents in Australia; to lobby the Australian Government against unfair migration legislation and policies; and to represent the Australian migration community on an international stage.

The Migration Alliance is today Australia’s peak body of the migration advisory industry. One of its most important recent achievements was to successfully lobby the government to reverse the decision to introduce the compulsory introduction of an English Language testing for all migration agents. If the change had been introduced, agents with long standing and successful businesses in Australia would have lost a hard earned livelihood.

Migration Alliance now has 'stakeholder' status with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) and is included in DIBP’s stakeholder briefings and consultations. Migration Alliance also participates in Federal and State government liaison meetings, the Office of the MARA and Members of Parliament and their staff. Migration Alliance also makes submissions to estimates committees such as the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Senate Estimates on behalf of its members.

Labor has backed down on what many in the industry described as an unreasonable demand to increase the sc457 income threshold from $53,900 to $57,000 and has thus allowed the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) to pass parliament.

As part of the compromise with the opposition, the Coalition government has however agreed to a review of the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT) later this year to see if any changes are still necessary. The last review recommended that the TSMIT should be frozen.

Analysts described the changes proposed by Labor in the compromise as ‘purely cosmetic’ and the delay in ratifying the agreement which has largely remained unchanged as unnecessary.

“The government has been vindicated for standing firm against the misleading and xenophobic campaign run against ChAFTA by the rogue Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union,” noted an opinion piece in The Australian today.

“The CFMEU conjured up an image of Chinese hordes descending on Australia to steal the jobs of locals. Bill Shorten did the right thing by striking a compromise with the Coalition and, however belatedly, repudiating the scare tactics of the CFMEU.”

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