MARCH 2014 – COMMUNITY LIAISON UPDATE

Dear Community Liaison network members

I am pleased to provide the community liaison update for March 2014.

In an interview with David Speers of Sky News, Canberra, DIBP Minister Scott Morrison, holds firm on the Coalition governments determination to reduce red-tape on skilled immigration but adds that there will be a focus on 'integrity measures' of the programme.

David Speers: The Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is with me this afternoon. Thank you for your time. I want to start on the 457 visas. Unions have been expressing concern today about a loophole they say has been reopened that is going to allow more foreign workers in at a time when unemployment is rising. Explain to me exactly what the government has done here.

Minister Morrison: Well it is quite a minor change. What it involves is that when someone has already been approved to be a sponsor of 457s rather than having to go back and fill out all the paperwork again to have that renewed when they have reached a certain number of employees they can continue to do it but every single 457 employee who has been employed must satisfy all the tests that are currently required for finding an Australian do the job first. So there is no change to that.

David Speers: Does it mean for example that employers will no longer face a penalty if they bring in more than they had applied for?

Minister Morrison: What it means is if they want to employ someone on 457s they need to satisfy all the advertising tests and all of the tests of finding an Australian worker first and if they can't find an Australian worker then we are not going to make them go back and fill out a whole bunch more forms which costs them time and money for their business. So this is about regulation reduction, removing the union red tape that was put there by the previous government.

Migration Alliance is proud to invite you to an exclusive Business Lunch hosted by Craig Laundy MP, Federal Member for Reid, with special guest, The Hon. Josh Frydenberg MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.

This is a unique opportunity for migration agent voices to be heard on key points affecting the migration profession. 

Migration Alliance board will be in attendance at this meeting beating the drum hard on the following issues:

Credit card charges are expected to be introduced from 22 March 2014 by DIBP on all its fees and charges. RMAs should properly adjust their costing disclosures to clients to reflect the expected price increase noting that the RBA allows for ‘reasonable costs’ to be recovered.

In aligning itself to commercial practice and improve its bottomline, DIBP has decided to recover credit card merchant fees from clients by adding a surcharge on credit card payments for all payments to DIBP. The surcharge could boost DIBPs bottomline by $14 million a year.

DIBPs financial statements indicate that despite a revenue of about 1.48 billion in FYE 2012-2013, its expenses, which largely come from border protection spending, led to a deficit of about $94 million for the year.

DIBP has not provided any indication of what the additional charges will be. Commercial operations charges vary widely and may range between 1.5% and 3% (sometimes even more). However, government agencies’ rates are generally half of that range. For instances, currently the Australian Tax Office (ATO) charges credit card merchant fees for payments at the rate of 0.42% for Visa and MasterCard payments and 1.45% for payments by American Express cards. DIBP is expected to announce its rates soon.

The MRT-RRT have requested that Migration Alliance provide this news to members:

Amendments to the Privacy Act 1988 commenced on 12 March 2014. The amendments are applicable to Australian government agencies and to many private sector organisations and involve the introduction of new Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Further information about the changes can be found on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website.

To comply with the privacy reforms the tribunals have released an updated Privacy Policy and new versions (Design date 03/14) of M1, M2 and R1 ‘Application for review’ forms. Previous versions of the ‘Application for review’ forms released in July 2013 (Design date 07/13) will not be accepted by the tribunals after 30 June 2014. Printouts of applications generated by the tribunals’ online application system are not affected and remain valid.