The Director of the Office of the MARA emailed Migration Alliance the following information late today:
The Department of Home Affairs has released a discussion paper: Creating a World Class Migration Industry, as part of its review of migration agents legislative instruments, and is seeking stakeholder views on the scope for industry reform.
The discussion paper is available on the Department’s website on the Submissions and discussion papers page. Submissions can be made by no later than 2pm AEST, 27 July 2020.
The Australian Government is committed to making the Australian migration advice industry world class. Already, Government has implemented a range of initiatives towards this vision, including:
•introducing stronger qualification requirements for new and existing registered migration agents
•cutting red tape by introducing legislation to remove lawyers from the immigration assistance regulatory scheme
•removing references to unregistered overseas agents on forms that appoint migration agents
•comprehensive consultation on a stronger and simpler Code of Conduct for registered migration agents.
Regulation of the migration assistance industry has been comprehensively reviewed, most recently through the 2019 Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s inquiry into the efficacy of current regulation of Australian migration and education agents.