Another country has been added to the Work and Holiday visa program (sc462) which will enable up to 200 young Australians and 200 young Slovaks to experience each other's culture through the exchange programme.

Young Aussies and Slovaks can now explore and work in each other's countries under a reciprocal work and holiday visa arrangement announced recently by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Julie Bishop and Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash.

Minister Bishop, who met and signed the agreement with Slovak Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Miroslav Lajčák during his three-day visit, said the new arrangement demonstrated the constructive and positive relationship between our two countries.

"This agreement will provide the opportunity for a culturally rich experience for the young adults of Australia and Slovakia and strengthen our already warm people-to-people links," Minister Bishop said.

"The new arrangement will allow up to 200 young people from both countries to enjoy a holiday in each other's country each year, during which they may undertake short term work and study," Minister Cash said adding,"Both countries will be working closely over the coming months to implement these changes and to complete all necessary legal and administrative processes to bring this visa into effect."

The date the change to the Work and Holiday (Subclass 462) visa comes into effect will be made available on the Department's website atwww.immi.gov.au.

Contempt in the face of the court is an act which has the tendency to interfere with or undermine the authority, performance or dignity of the courts or those who participate in their proceedings: Witham v Holloway (1995) 183 CLR 525 per McHugh J at 538-539. Disobeying a court order is a contempt of court: O’Shane v Channel Seven Sydney Pty Ltd [2005] NSWSC 1358. It's an offense punishable by imprisonment or a fine or both.

Two lawyers from the law firm Maurice Blackburn, Elizabeth O'Shea and Min Guo, were denied access by immigration officials to the high security "White" compound for three days in April to complete an inspection of its conditions, despite having obtained court orders, according to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald today.

The lawyers were pursuing a class action on behalf of people who have been injured or pregnant while in detention on Christmas Island during the past three years and suffered physical or psychological injury.

The department of immigration had demanded that the lawyers have a court order to inspect the whole centre. But when the lawyers arrived at the White compound, the regional manager for Christmas Island, Rebecca O'Reilly, refused to let them inspect the premises for “privacy’ and ‘security’ reasons - clearly clueless about DIBPs jurisdictional limits.

According to the report, while the lawyers from Maurice Blackburn remained on the island, their representatives returned to the Supreme Court in Melbourne to seek an urgent application for access to the compound.

Regardless of whether a crime is proven, the minister for immigration will be allowed to strip the Australian citizenship of dual-nationals, under proposed amendments to the Citizenship Act.

The intended changes are reportedly aimed at people with links to terrorist groups. The government has started a broad review of Australian citizenship and is looking to tighten that grant criteria as part of its measure to counter radicalisation and safeguard the nation’s social cohesion, according to a report in The Australian.

“Under the legislation that we intend to introduce in the next few weeks, if the minister is satisfied …, he may, subject ultimately to judicial review, strip the Australian citizenship from those individuals and obviously they will then no longer have an entitlement to return to Australia,” announced Prime Minister Tony Abbot.

Dual-nationals stripped of their Australian citizenship by the Immigration Minister would be allowed to seek review of the decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and Federal Court.

The immigration minister will rely on the advice of intelligence agencies in the decision. Mr Peter Dutton, admitted that it will be “very difficult of course to gather sufficient evidence to satisfy an Australian court beyond reasonable doubt that that person committed that offence in that part of the world.”

Former attorney general and immigration minister, Mr Philip Ruddock has been appointed as a special envoy for citizenship and community engagement in the broader review of Australian citizenship. Mr Ruddock said: “We offer people respect for their race, their country of origin, their religion, their cultures, but we do have expectations that all who make a commitment to this nation and its future, will observe the laws of Australia. There is nothing new in that.”

An increase in the number of allegations relating to the facilitating of fake marriages for visas has prompted a crackdown by the department of immigration on the scam. In a joint effort with the department of Human Services, the move will target welfare recipients who are on single payments but have declared sponsorship of a partner for immigration purposes.

Using the new data-matching programme, a joint media release by the two department states that it will be easier to identify fake couples who are fraudulently claiming social security payments, or committing migration fraud.

“This data-matching programme is part of a whole-of-government approach to fraud detection and prevention. People who deliberately take advantage of Australia’s welfare and migration system will be caught,” sated, the Immigration minister, Mr Peter Dutton, adding,” “The consequences are serious – people may be forced to repay the benefits they were not entitled to, have their visa application refused, or face criminal charges.”

Human Services minister Ms Marise Payne said, “Last financial year, data-matching activities conducted by my Department returned $132.7 million in net benefits to government.

Recently, two people were ordered to stand trial over an alleged visa marriage scam in Brisbane.

Chetan Mohanlal Mashru and Divya Krishne Gowda were, accused of arranging more than a dozen fake weddings. The Magistrates Court was told the ceremonies took place in Brisbane around 2011 so Indian men could stay in Australia.

After years of making decisions for Australian immigration clients, and hard decisions at that, I thought that I would share what I have learned from the decision making process.

Most decisions we make, we make with other people.  It is my view that it is genuinely better to make decisions collaboratively.  The reasons for this are as follows:

• The risk is spread
• The decisions are mostly better
• Individual shortcomings are mitigated
• There is a shared vision and shared responsibility
• There can be the building of consensus and buy-in
• People feel included which increases motivation

Whilst decision making is hard to evaluate as we can't see the alternative universe, what I have learned to be true, is that if you average the decisions of a bunch of people then you reduce error.