Christopher Levingston Blog

We will all be familiar with clients who at the last moment are too sick to attend a hearing either at Court ar at the AAT.

The appropriate course is to ask the client to provide a medical certificate seeking to be excused.

However, we must make sure that the relevant certificate is in proper form and says that the client is too unwell to attend or to give evidence in the proceedings.

It is always the small things that get you into trouble. 

One of our colleagues finds himself in trouble and is the subject of a caution for a period of 6 months.   We do not intend naming this agent nor posting the sanction from the OMARA website.  If an agent wishes to do this personally about themselves, then they can set themselves up as a blogger and write about it, as has occurred in the past. 

The details of the conduct of an RMA with a sanction are of course relevant to the OMARA’s decision, but the overall message that comes from this case is that it is always the small stuff that gets you into trouble. 

All practitioners need to be aware of a recent requirement to document all instances of staff or client complaints:

Please access the attached form and implement immediately.

Larney v Minister for Immigration & Anor [2018] FCCA 2707 is a recent decision of the Federal Court out of Western Australia.

www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2019/2019fca0700

This was a case where the applicant for the visa asserted that he had no previous "relationships" and that the fact of there being 2 children as a result of those relationships did not mean that he had a "relationship"  (spouse or defacto) and on that basis PIC4020 was not enlivened.

I do not know what is happening but perhaps there has been a rip in the space time continuum.

An unbelievable number of enquiries from both practitioners and individual applicants who seem infected by a virus which sees them lodge an application onshore, get a BVA but then travel and get stuck offshore.

One of my clients who had a complex and at that stage unresolved application for review, rang me on after Christmas and said, "They wont let me board my flight".