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Immigration Daily News Advisory Board and the Independent Review of the Office of the MARAAustralian Immigration Daily News
Breaking Australian immigration news brought to you by Migration Alliance and associated bloggers.
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Advisory Board and the Independent Review of the Office of the MARA
The following was sent to the Independent Review of the Office of the MARA by Migration Alliance:
The attached newspaper report that finds that independent directors who do not understand the specifics of an industry have caused companies to destroy $60billion of shareholder value.
Debunking-the-myths-of-board-independence.pdf
"The reasons proffered for the under-performance of companies that have conformed to perceived best-practice relate to not having 'skin in the game'. They therefore have no meaningful alignment with the interests of shareholders, are slower to act and are less effective than their non-complying counterparts; they are tardier in replacing ineffective chief executives and pay CEOs and themselves more than boards where directors do have skin in the game. They have little (if any) direct experience with the company or even its industry."
Whilst the study is not directly related to advice to a qango, it gives pause for thought. It lends indirect support to the point made by yourselves about the advisers to the MARA; they are from non-profit organisations, etc. They have no experience in running a sole trader business which is such a huge part of the migration advice profession.
Clearly, the advisory board to the MARA should be constituted by 45% coming from sole traders if the MARA is to receive any meaningful insights into how the profession operates.
Comments
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Thursday, 31 July 2014OMARA is unresponsive and seriously incompetent .
How can they justify such massive registration fees and yet have an office in central Sydney ? Professional Standards keeps employing more people ' regulating ' agents when a fast common sense cost effective approach could be adopted in dealing with complaints .
As I have mentioned in previous blogs OMARA staff are so seriously incompetent it is scary ...a sheltered workshop for DIBP unemployable which the profession has to pay for and deal with on a daily basis ! Does anybody know what rent is being paid on their office ? Why are they not located in a cheap suburb of Melb , Canberra or Syd ??
The thought of all that waste with incompetent staff we as a profession pay for makes me VERY ANGRY ....
Immigration blog
Liana! Last night I downloaded Clients Monies Toolkit publication from OMARA website which is a guide to best practice for handling clients money . This publication can be as a good proof for what you have posted today as the author is not aware of what is happening in real world. For example if you go to page 43 , an example of Clients account Banks Statement , you will notice that it is impossible to have such a lengthy note when you do online transactions since you will be allowed to write not more than certain number of characters ( Less than 25 including space between words).
Another example could be found on page 45 ( Clients Account Money Ledger )
I do not think the author has ever been a sole trader and has a real insight about the problems that a migration agent is facing on a daily basis . I am in the business for almost 5 years , coming to work 8:00 AM and going home 8:00 PM , working minimum 6 days per week and still I can not make enough money to support my family and we are 100 percent eligible for Centrelink benefits due to the low income , but I feel embarrassed to apply for any Centrelink benefits. This is the real world . That is why 50 percents of the agents will not renew their registration for the first 5 years when they are in business , because they can not make money also they have to pay high registration fee , legend subscription fee etc etc ..
According to ANSZCO code , a migration agent skill level is 1 and an immigration officer is 4 and the funny thing is that a skill level 4 occupation is able to report to MARA a skill level 1 occupation for the same job that they are doing .. There are lots of issues in this industry