Australian Immigration Daily News

The Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2017, that was introduced in the House of Representatives on 21 June 2017, includes amended provisions concerning the requirements for registration as a new migration agent.

These amendments are evidently intended to facilitate the recommendations in the Kendall Report that was released on 24 September 2014 concerning educational requirements for migration agents.

The Kendall Report recommended that the previous requirement that “non-lawyer” migration agents entering the profession be required to complete a Graduate Certificate in Migration Law and Practice (a 6-month course) with a new requirement that new applicants for registration be required to complete a Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice (a 12-month course).

The Bill will provide for the introduction of a new section 289A (to replace the current section 289A) relating to the educational requirements for migration agents.

The new section 289A will have a different “heading” from the current section.

The present heading of section 289A is “Applicant must not be registered if does not satisfy registration requirements”

The heading of the new proposed section 289A is proposed to read “Applicant must not be registered if he or she does not satisfy academic and vocational requirements”.

The Explanatory Memorandum for the Bill states that the new heading will more accurately reflect the operation of this section of the Migration Act.

It is also stated in the Explanatory Memorandum that the “prescribed course” that is currently referenced in the present subsection 289A(c) will be the Graduate Diploma Course.  The reference to the “prescribed course” will simply be “re-located” within the new proposed section 289A to subsection 289A(2)(i). 

Additionally, new section 289A makes reference to a requirement that an applicant for initial registration must pass a prescribed examination, within a prescribed period before the date of the registration application.

The Explanatory Memorandum indicates that this examination will be the so-called “Capstone Examination” referred to in the Kendall Report. That Report indicates that the Capstone Examination would be taken only after completion of a 12-month period of supervised practice after the Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice has been completed.  This Capstone Examination was proposed by the Kendall Report to be a “stand-alone” exam that would be “de-linked” from the required Graduate Diploma course and which would not be administered by any of the providers of the Diploma course.

It is to be presumed that there will be a new legislative instrument defining the prescribed course that must be taken by entrants to the migration advice profession when the legislation proposed by the Bill comes into force.  And the legislative instrument will surely provide details about the Capstone Exam as well.

We’ll just to wait and see what happens if and when the Bill is enacted!

If the Bill is enacted, the changes to the registration requirements for new agents will apply to applications made after 1 January 2018.