Australian Immigration Daily News

MARCH 2014 – COMMUNITY LIAISON UPDATE

Dear Community Liaison network members

I am pleased to provide the community liaison update for March 2014.

I welcome any feedback you would like to provide about these updates. If you have any suggestions or comments, please forward them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Caseload report to 28 February 2014

Caseload statistics for the financial year to 28 February 2014 are now available on the Statistics and caseload summaries page of our website. The number of decisions made by the tribunals continues to increase with 16,067 decisions made to the end of February; a 48% increase compared with the same period last year.

The active caseload rose slightly during February to 18,073, mainly due to receiving a record 1,264 RRT lodgements in February.  The RRT active caseload continues to rise with 4,308 active cases; 61% more when compared with the same time last year. A comparable number of MRT applicants are from Victoria (34%) and New South Wales (35%), while 48% of RRT applicants are in NSW and only 26% in Victoria. Due to our new online lodgement facility, this month’s report includes some interim statistics. These temporary issues will be rectified in time for next month’s report.

Amendments to the Privacy Act 1988

Amendments to the Privacy Act 1988 commenced on 12 March 2014. The amendments are applicable to Australian government agencies and to many private sector organisations and involve the introduction of new Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Further information about the changes can be found on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website.

To comply with the privacy reforms the tribunals have released an updated Privacy Policy and new versions (Design date 03/14) of M1, M2 and R1 ‘Application for review’ forms. Previous versions of the ‘Application for review’ forms released in July 2013 (Design date 07/13) will not be accepted by the tribunals after 30 June 2014. Printouts of applications generated by the tribunals’ online application system are not affected and remain valid.

The importance of providing documents prior to the day of your hearing

A reminder that applicants and representatives should provide any additional documents or information they wish to rely on during the hearing by the date specified in the hearing invitation where possible.

Applicants who bring original documents to a hearing for the tribunal to consider should also bring a copy of the documents. If a copy of an original document is not provided, standard practice for cases heard by multi applicant hearing lists is to return the original document at the end of the review (that is, not make a copy during the hearing) to ensure there is no delay to the conduct of the hearing list.

Any documents or written arguments provided to the tribunals in a language other than English must be accompanied by an English translation from an accredited translator.

Community Liaison Meetings

The next round of meetings will take place during April and May 2014:

• Melbourne – Wednesday, 30 April 2014, 2:00pm to 3:30pm
• Sydney – Tuesday, 6 May 2014, 2:00pm to 3:00pm
• Brisbane – Thursday, 8 May 2014, 1:00pm to 2:00pm
• Perth – Monday, 19 May 2014, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
• Adelaide – Wednesday, 21 May 2014, 2:00pm to 3:00pm

Invitations to the meetings will be sent shortly and will include a link to an online registration form to RSVP for these meetings. This will assist in the organisation of the meetings. 

Kind regards,

Kay Ransome

Principal Member