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OMARA AWARDS ITSELF QUALIFICATION: EQUIVALENCE TO BUGGERY
Since inception four years ago, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA), has grown from an unnecessary regulatory authority to an overfunded and out of date Australian Labor Party cost legacy that, some would argue, has a crystal clear self interest mandate, in protecting its high paying jobs located in the plush offices overlooking Sydney’s Hyde Park.
According to various sources, OMARA, rather than assisting registered agents or protecting consumers from unregistered practice continues to do the opposite.
Almost all Registered Migration Agents, including lawyers, are affected by the ongoing inefficiencies and incompetence at the OMARA and its culture of bureaucratic interference.
It appears OMARA has graduated with a qualification equivalent to buggery by constantly causing issues for qualified Registered Migration Agents where there is no legal basis for the issue. OMARA’s reliance upon the so often quoted ‘discretionary powers’, which even to a layperson, often fall outside the legal mandate, which is to deal with code of conduct related matters.
Even though as agents, we deal with OMARA often, we know little about how it's officers go about their work, or their level of competence. Well, its our turn.
In a matter of months, the internal workings of OMARA will be exposed. Such exposure is not likely to leave OMARA much enthused. Regarding individual officers, their inquiries of agents are unlikely to meet the required level of competence but for a select few.
Recent, examples of OMARA administrative nonsense include Carls’ issue in regard to disbursement of interest on clients' account. Then there is the increasing of CPD hours for annual conference purposes without cause. Then there is acting against its own legal advice by interpreting black letter law 'retainer contracts' as a 'fee service arrangement'.
Your Migration Litigation Community is now active with one focus – to assist you in standing up for your rights and give you cost effective tools to do so, including templates to challenge OMARA in the Federal Court and expose OMARA's incompetency with advanced FOI requests.
Please feel free to contribute. Please also attend the 'Slash Red Tape Lunch' with Josh Frydenberg MP and Craig Laundy MP to push the MA agenda to stop red tape at the OMARA.
Next blog will feature “A Starters Guide to challenging anything and everything OMARA is asking of you”.
Comments
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Sunday, 18 September 2016Trawl through this. It is on my website and all my service agreements:
WARNING
The OMARA is an essentially useless office that is part of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and I have told them so repeatedly. With the stroke of a pen the minister can terminate them all as easily as s/he can terminate a perfectly valid visa application. The OMARA can do nothing about unregistered agents overseas or parliamentarians or DIBP officers who give often incorrect, migration advice in Australia, or education agents who give catastrophically incorrect migration advice under the table. About all the OMARA can do, having received a complaint, is haul a registered migration agent over the coals - after the event. They cannot order repayment of money lost. They can do nothing when the minister (The Terminator) changes the rules in the middle of the game or one of his delegates or ‘designated authorities’ bungles your case. By the way, the ‘average fee’ misinformation published by the OMARA is just that. -
Monday, 19 September 2016
fascinated how such seriously incompetent management are entrenched and untouchable at Professional Standards . In the light of the recent MARA review it would be assumed the minister would have targeted all senior managers and transferred them out to some where useless to finish their days and wait for retirement .The Minister should have replaced all managers after the review so to ensure there was a new direction and approach within MARA .
Last week I was speaking to a MARA admin staff member who had serious issues understanding what I was saying and asking !!!!! .....frightening such an incompetent person is on the MARA payroll. Shame the Minister and senior departmental staff do not take agent and Migration Alliance criticisms on board and address some issues
Immigration blog
There has been a recent development in the battle being fought by Dinko.
I understand that at a Directions Hearing yesterday, Dinko's posts on this website were ( and I wasn't there) described as raising some unspecified concerns about being intimidatory of Debra Radjenovic and broadly, a traversal of the "fit and proper requirement" for continued registration.
In addition, the complaint articulated by Dinko to the effect of the failure of the OMARA to update its website as 'directed' by the AAT is either true or it is false. If it is true then the failure is either explicable or inexplicable.
I really cant see how a truthful statement can "intimidate" an officer at the OMARA.
They ( OMARA Officers) are not witnesses in the proceedings at the AAT as, in my experience and the Solicitors for the OMARA will confirm this, OMARA decision makers are "not called" to give evidence and any attempt to summons them is routinely opposed by their Solicitors.
Dinko's remarks , if true and made by him, are interesting in a number of respects.
First, if in calling Debra Radjenovic a liar ( Oxford dict: "A person who lies or tells a falsehood: an untruthful person") that remark if untrue would be defamatory and would could form a proper basis for a complaint. If the allegation is true then it is not defamatory.
I can only assume that the officer concerned is not intimidated because the allegation is not true and she has not commenced any proceedings in defamation. She is, presumably, not intending to give any evidence in the proceedings in the AAT ( I speculate) and absent that process and the opportunity to cross examine her the question as to her truthfulness will not be resolved.
What is of concern to me is the resort to attempt by the OMARA to ( apparently) widen the proceedings to take into account what has been said on the Forum. I know it is trawled through by everyman and his dog ( a big hello to all my friends supporters ....!) the issue that arises is that when you are at the AAT the OMARA is permitted to expand the brief of alleged misconduct to all conduct both prior to, during and subsequently, up until the time of the final determination of the AAT of the matter before it.
Thus, the conduct, of for example, alleging that Debra Radjenovic is a person who is untruthful could not be properly tested and could not therefore, absent her jumping into the witness box, be resolved either way. It is on that basis that it is difficult to understand how absent some evidence capable of being tested and determined the allegation of not being a fit and proper person by calling an officer of the OMARA a liar could ever be resolved.
If the issue was in contest and Ms Radjenovic were to jump the itness box in proceedings either at the AAT or in the supreme court defamation list I would hope to be called to give evidence in support of the defence as to my knowledge and belief.
I hope that doesn't mean I am not a fit and proper person either, but I simply cannot abide a bully calling the victim a bully because they complain loudly and publicly about their treatment.
Good on you Dinko!