Prime Minister Tony Abbot has announced a cabinet reshuffle. The current minister for immigration Scott Morrison will become social services minister and take charge of a “families package” and ongoing welfare crackdown while Peter Dutton – who the prime minister described as a “tough, no nonsense individual” – will take over immigration and border security.

According to a report in The Guardian, Morrison was understood to have been disappointed having sought the defence portfolio in the reshuffle. In his announcement Tony Abbott stressed Morrison’s role in social services would be central to the government’s hopes for a political revival in the new year by putting “jobs and families at the heart of our political agenda”, as well as to its plans for “budget repair”.

 “I can think of no finer advocate than Scott Morrison, he is the master of difficult policy as he has abundantly demonstrated in all but stopping the boats over the last 15 months,” Abbott said. “He is also a very decent human being.”

Dutton will inherit the problem of more than 2,000 asylum seekers still in offshore detention and more than 30,000 asylum seekers in Australia facing the uncertainty of temporary protection visas.

Dutton has not had a great year as the health minister as he struggled to make a case for the GP co-payment. He will continue to oversee Australia's offshore processing of asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus Island.

_{Dutton’s Background}

Peter Dutton was elected as the Federal Member for Dickson in Queensland in November 2001 when, at the age of 30 he defeated Cheryl Kernot.

For people having issues with ImmiAccount the DIBP has today asked agents to send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with a screen shot and explanation of the issue experienced. 

To take a screen shot please press the 'Print Screen' key on your keyboard then paste that onto a word document.  Save the document.  The 'Print Screen' key is usually found in the top row of the keyboard near the F12 key.

Once an email is received, the DIBP will then indetify if the client will become unlawful soon and will prioritise based on the individual case-by-case basis (visa expiry date).

A couple of registered migration agents have reported that ImmiAccount is not working and showing the 'an error has occurred' and 'temporarily unavailable' message on some of the attempted entries. 
Approaching Christmas and the end of the year and ImmiAccount not working.  Makes life pretty hard for RMAs and applicants who need to lodge visa applications before EOY shutdown.

Firefox seems to crash more than Internet Explorer so try using IE to lodge.

Immigration laws look set to get tighter with Prime Minister Tony Abbot announcing an urgent review of how the Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis slipped through the migration checks and subsequent police monitoring.

Media reports claim that the Iranian authorities warned the Australian government that Monis had been charged with multiple counts in 1996, the time he made an application for asylum in Australia.

Prime Minister Tony Abbot has told ABC radio that the Australian authorities “had to do better” and is demanding answers as to why Monis was granted a visa in the first place and how is it that he was not subsequently monitored given his chequered past and criminal conduct in Australia.

When asked whether the system had failed, despite the introduction of a raft of new security laws in Parliament this year, Mr Abbott agreed it “did not adequately deal” with Mr Monis. “There’s no doubt about that. That’s why we have to learn the lessons of everything that happened, we have to be constantly asking ourselves is this the best we can do and frankly we have to always be better than this, because if we aren’t good at this our people suffer” said Mr Abbot.

The Sydney Morning Herald has called for probationary period to be introduced for new migrants. “Monis is a classic case study of why Australia needs to have probationary conditions applied to the residence status and then citizenship granted to immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. To cover for mistakes, this probationary status needs to be rigorous and lengthy.”

Mr Abbott said he wanted to see a report into the events leading up to the Sydney siege, which he intended to release publicly.

The department of immigration will charge 50 per cent more for partner visa application fees from next year, according to a recent media release by DIBP.

A check on the charges using DIBPs online visa charge calculator however shows that it has yet to be updated with the new few structure therefore potentially misleading applicants who are intending to lodge their applications next year.

The new charges will apply to several partner visa categories namely Partner visa subclasses (combined 309/100 and 820/801) and the prospective marriage visa (subclass 300).

DIBP has not stated why it has targeted Partner visas for such a massive price increase and simply notes that it is required “to fund whole-of-government policy priorities.” The fee increases are expect to raise revenues by $373.6 million over four years.

The price rise will come into force from January 1, 2015.