Australian Immigration Daily News

The Migration Agents Declaration is made under subsection 51A(1) of the Legislation Act. Under that subsection, the Attorney-General can align the sunsetting days of two or more legislative instruments to 1 April or 1 October of a year that is up to five years later than the earliest sunsetting day.

The instruments specified in the declaration will then be repealed on the day specified in the declaration instead of the scheduled sunsetting day. The instruments specified in the Migration Agents Declaration are:

- Migration Agents Regulations 1998
- Migration Agents Registration Application Charge Regulations 1998
- Migration Agents (IMMI 17/047: CPD Activities, Approval of CPD Providers and CPD Provider Standards) Instrument 2017, and
- Migration (IMMI 18/003: Specified courses and exams for registration as a migration agent) Instrument 2018.

The Migration Agents Declaration aligns the sunsetting dates of the instruments to be 1 April 2024.

The Group of Eight (Go8), as Australia’s leading research-intensive universities, with seven of its members in the world’s top 100 universities, welcomes the announcement that Australia has today signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) with Indonesia.

In 2016, the Go8 recommended to DFAT that the agreement include provisions allowing the universities of both countries to establish campuses offshore. This has been partly met, with the agreement incorporating future liberalisation measures for Australian universities seeking to operate in Indonesia.

Go8 universities hosted around 4,790 enrolments from Indonesian nationals in 2018, including half (50%) of those who came to Australia to undertake a research degree.

On 1 March 2019, Minister Coleman announced that applications to sponsor a parent for a Sponsored Parent (Temporary) visa will be open from 17 April 2019.

We previously ran the announcement of this story on this blog here.

The legislation tied to this new visa which allows sponsors to bring their parents to Australia for longer periods was passed in November last year.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has secured $65,438 in penalties in Court against the former franchisee of two Subway outlets in Sydney for underpaying a Chinese worker more than $16,000.

The Federal Circuit Court penalised Danmin Zhang $9,255 - who formerly operated Subway franchise outlets at Artarmon and Stanmore. The company Ms Zhang and her husband operate, G & Z United Pty Ltd, has been penalised a further $56,183.

Fair Work Inspectors found the worker, a Chinese national, had been underpaid a total of $16,345 for work performed across both stores, after she was paid unlawful flat rates of $14 to $14.50 per hour.
Under the Fast Food Industry Award 2010, she was entitled to receive minimum rates of more than $18, plus casual loading, for ordinary hours, and penalty rates of up to $52.22 on public holidays.

The MIA have released a YouTube video to the public about the Northern Territory's DAMA Mk II.  The presentation by the Northern Territory Government is very helpful and comes complete with a detailed powerpoint presentation on the NT's DAMA Mk II.

The video can be found by clicking below:

UPDATE 4 MARCH 2019 12:30PM: The MIA removed this free video from YouTube shortly after this article was released.