Australian Immigration Daily News

From 1 July 2018:

The Australian Citizenship Regulation 2016 is amended to remove concessional fees for citizenship applications made under section 21 of the Citizenship Act, for persons who have:

• prescribed health care cards; and or
• pensioner cards

These persons will not be eligible for a concessional application fee for Australian Citizenship of either $20 or $40.  

There have been multiple repeals and amendments under the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2018 Measures No. 1) Regulations 2018 dated 7 June 2018.

From 1 July 2018:

Schedule 1—Lodgement of partner and parent visa applications

Further to our recent published article in relation occupations flagged for removal (see https://migrationalliance.com.au/immigration-daily-news/entry/2018-05-skilled-occupation-list-changes-some-flagged-for-removal-on-1-july-2018.html) all States and Territories are currently in the midst of updating the State Occupation Lists.

Migration Alliance brings you a state by state summary:

New South Wales                  

Recent posts on the Migration Alliance blog have brought our attention to the new (Department of Home Affairs) DHA phone number.

The Home Affairs website states that they have a new global call centre, that's apparently managed by Datacom so you wont be able to get position numbers from staff (Datacom is currently unverified at this stage but information has been supplied to MA).

You can apparently call from anywhere in the world 9am -5pm (local time in the country you're calling from) on +61 2 6196 0196.

Since the publication of the blog concerning the Law Council of Australia submission to the JSCM, the Founder of Migration Alliance, Liana Allan received an email from and also spoke to David Prince, the Chair of the LCA's Migration Law Committee.  The email and phone conversations between them took place yesterday.  David Prince told Ms Allan that the Law Council submission has a drafting error in it.

That error was said to apparently lie in the Law Council of Australia's submission which suggested that RMAs not be permitted to act for clients at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). 

What was apparently intended was a recommendation to the effect that RMAs not be permitted to appear in adversarial proceedings at the AAT.  Accordingly the Law Council submission is being amended to continue to permit Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) to appear in the Migration Review division of the AAT.