Once a year Bupa reviews its premiums and benefits in line with industry standards to ensure your customers are getting great value from their cover. We have improved our Overseas Visitor Health Cover brochure to keep it simple and easy for our customers to understand. We’ve also included a full table of benefits so your customers can see exactly what they’re getting from their cover. Please click on the link below to find our latest Overseas Visitor Health Cover brochure for Working and Non-Working visas, applicable from 1st of April 2015.

http://www.bupa.com.au/staticfiles/BupaP3/pdfs/10306-OVC-Brochure-Important-Information-Guide.pdf

Please take some time to review these changes and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your Bupa representative.

A message has been received from, Innovation, Trade and Investment, Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorat, as follows:

"As of 5 pm AEST tomorrow Friday 3 April 2015, the ACT is closing applications for the Skilled Nominated Visa (190)  from all overseas residents due to reaching our 2014-15 numbers . The ACT Government  will continue to process applications from ACT residents.

Acceptance of overseas applications,  will recommence on 1 July 2015."

Changes – updated 26 Mar 2015: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2015L00351

Explanatory: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2015L00351/Explanatory%20Statement/Text

457 recommendation – government response – updated 18 Mar 2015: http://www.immi.gov.au/pub-res/Pages/reviews-and-inquiries/government-response.aspx

FIRB fees for foreigners who buy property here could harm the education sector, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review. The intended measures indicate a lack of understanding of the full contibutions of foreign students to Australia.

The fact is overseas students often buy property as a short to medium term investment to cover their accommodation needs and provide a decent return which potentially could cover some if not all of their education costs. They benefit, but so does Australia.

However the government’s move in February to introduce a minimum fee of $5000 to foreign property buyers is short-sighted and will send the wrong signal to overseas students – that “they are not welcome”, says the senior economist at Fairfax- owned Domain Group Andrew Wilson.

Australian education exports are worth a lot and we “need more of these revenue sources, not less” Wilson told the AFR.

“…xenophobia is alive and well in certain sections of the community, and certain sections of the media want to stir it up. And yet there are so many positives about overseas students on temporary visas buying property in Australia. If they don’t buy property here and only rent, it pushes up rent,” says Wilson.

Wilson adds that foreign student buyers of property are providing substantial stamp duty revenue for state governments.

Passport numbers, dates of birth and visa details of the President of the United States of America together with those of some 30 other world leaders who attended the G20 summit including Russian president Vladmir Putin and German chancellor Angela Merkel were carelessly emailed out by a case officer at Australia’s department off immigration late last year.

The error has made international news with the likes of the Washington Post, CNBC, New York Times etc reporting the mistake and announcing that the White House is investigating the issue and looking into taking “all appropriate steps necessary to ensure the privacy and security of the president’s personal information."

The embarrassing error was a result of a mindless moment of a case officer who simply failed to check the autofill function to ensure the email had the correct recipient’s email address. The sensitive email was sent to an organiser of the Asian Cup Soccer tournament who for a moment would probably have been impressed with the high level interest in the tournament.

DIBP has brushed off the incident as an “isolated example of human error” and it considered the risks of the breach to be “very low”, according to a report in the ABC. An email to the privacy commissioner said then immigration minister Scott Morrison was notified but the department did not consider it necessary to notify the leaders involved.