Australian Immigration Daily News

The Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Act 2020 (the Amendment Act) amended the Migration Act to improve the effectiveness of the scheme that regulates migration agents. The Amendment Act removed unrestricted legal practitioners from the regulatory scheme that governs migration agents to provide that unrestricted legal practitioners cannot register as migration agents and are entirely regulated by their own professional bodies.

The amendments made by the Amendment Act also permit eligible restricted legal practitioners to be both registered migration agents and restricted legal practitioners for a period of up to two years. 5 Subsection 278A(3) of the Migration Act provides that the eligible period is two years from the time the person first held a restricted practising certificate. However, section 333C of the Act provides that the eligible period for a person who was a restricted legal practitioner immediately before the day Division 8 commenced (22 March 2021) is two years after that commencement day.

Source: LIN21020.pdf and LIN21020-Explanatory-Statement.pdf