Gollywobbler

Hi Amanda I doubt whether Australia will relax the Balance of Family test or that it will make many other changes to Parent migration, since the now hideously expensive Contributory Parent visa is now nearly 12 years old and has proven to be so popular in spite of its cost. My widowed mother is dead now but she held a Contributory Parent visa that was granted in 2006, when they were reasonably-priced. I've lost touch with the details of Australia's visa system but I wonder whether (Aussie) Retirement Visas are still possible? If your parents are very wealthy, RVs might be a goer PROVIDED that RVs would also suit your parents tax-wise. I'd consult Alan Collett of Go Matilda about this possibility because in addition to being an experienced Registered Migration Agent, Alan is also a Chartered Accountant both in his native UK and in Australia, where he now lives. Alan is ferociously good at tax-planning etc in both jurisdictions, so I'd definitely want him aboard if I were considering a Retirement Visa for myself. There used to be a visa for Australia which involved the new immigrant investing over $1m AUD and establishing a business of his/her own in Australia. The quid pro quo was Permanent Residence in Australia but I can't remember the name of this little-used visa. There was a Briton who was in his 70s, I believe. He bought a block of flats in Brisbane, I heard. One would need to remind Alan Collett about this none-too-young Brit in order to jog Alan's memory. Australia has scrapped a number of different visas in recent years because 148 different visas was about 100 too many and I don't know what happened about the one I have in mind. Another possibility for your parents would be to think outside of the box. In their shoes, I'd be looking at an MM2H visa for Malaysia instead of Australia. The flight between Kuala Lumpur and Adelaide is usually only about 8 hours and Air Asia do the route cheaply, I believe. I think the time-zone difference between KL and AEST is only about 3 hours because there is not much difference in the longitudes of KL and Canberra respectively. MM2H is shorthand for the "Malaysia My Second Home" visa, which is a bit of a mouthful so everyone just calls it MM2H. Also, East Malaysia (think Kuching, Kinabalu etc) is closer to Australia than West Malaysia. Cheers Gill

Good for Senator Hanson-Young and very well done to Alan Collett and Johnshepherd. FWIW, I felt that Abbott was being too harsh. Also, do these various countries (including Australia and the UK) want skilled immigrants or not? Many a skilled immigrant will not make the move to the new country if doing so would tear his/her family apart. Cheers Gill

Hi Day Trader Wrussell is Westly Russell, who is a very experienced Registered Migration Agent. In general, Australia will not accept migrants who are or will be incapable of earning their own living. Therefore, everything turns on the degree and severity of the medical condition involved. Cheers Gill

Hi there Your post brings back memories for me too! My father bought shares in Tronoh Mines and hung onto them for about 30 years, I think. During the 1980s, something happened to the world price of tin. I don't know exactly what happened but my father sold his shares in Tronoh Mines (probably at the bottom of the market.) I remember thinking that if the value of his Tronoh Mines shares had plummeted, Dad might as well keep his purely for their sentimental value if nothing else. My father was an engineer. He always worked for Perak Hydro, which wa a wholly owned subsidiary of Balfour Beatty. I think BB had been responsible for building Chenderoh Dam during the 1920s. Back then, I think the British Colonials had decided that hydro-electric power was the way to go. According to Dad, reliable mains power was essential for keeping all the tin mines running and also to prevent looting during the 12 years' Emergency between 1948-1960. Some of the tin mines used dredgers but even the open-cast tin mines all needed huge pumps for the water. After the Emergency, everyone got used to an endless supply of mains electricity, I suppose. My parents retired from Malaysia in 1976, when my father was 55. (I think it was compulsory for the expats to retire once they turned 55.) However, buring the 1980s all of Perak Hydro's expat engineers were forced to retire, even though many of them were not 55. I think Perak Hydro was taken over by the Malaysian version of the National Grid. I remember seeing tin-mines every day whenever I was in Malaysia. The dredgers looked big, black and scary, I recall, so I always declined invitations to go aboard a dredger! However, I still have a lovely paper-weight, made of pure tin. One of the tin-mining companies probably gave it to Dad originally and I probably snaffled it from him! Pure tin is beautiful. It looks like sterling silver and it does not tarnish or rust but, apparently, tin is too soft for making jewellery. "Perak" means "silver" in Malay, which must be how the State got its name, I imagine. Thank you very much for bringing back such happy memories for me. Cheers Gill

FWIW, I think that anyone contemplating applying for one of the visas described by johnbshepherd should make their application as quickly as possible. I say this because DIBP has "form" about this one. A few years ago, they suddenly announced one morning that they would not acccept new applications for the [xyz] visa after midnight AEST that night. Then they actually prevented new applications after 23:30 that night. There had been no prior warning about the final 30 minutes but DIBP's feeble excuse was that they had needed to do something to their IT system. They might do the same thing again, so I would urge all prospective applicants to act very quickly. Cheers Gill

Hello Sotonborn It is certainly possible for you to apply for an sc804 whilst you are on a sc410 - it sounds as if you will be OK on the Balance of Family test? Please go towards the end of the thread in the link below (about Page 15 onward.) http://www.pomsinadelaide.com/forum/adelaide-migration-issues/4509-cheap-parent-visas-part-i.html You want the posts contributed by a user called johnbshepherd. He & his wife held sc410s originally but I believe that their sc804s avee now been granted. It might be worth sending him a Private Message. Cheers & good luck. Gill

Hi Mis I haven't been arpund lately because I suddenly suffered a pretty unpleasant stroke a few months agp & blah blah. It's not worth dwelling on the details. Also, after my beloved mother's death in Oct 2012. I went through a phase of loathing everything to do with Australia because my mother died there. Bereavement causes irrational thinking, I more or less realise now. s far as I can gather from your recent posts, you are hoping to save your parents a bit of money. However, whatever ypu do, you will not save them much money via the Contributory Parent or the Contributory Aged Parent routes, my friend. With my own mother, my sister & I decided that certainty was more important than money. We wanted Mum to know that she would be a full Permant Resident immediately, so we decided to go straight for the 143 and be done with it. That saved extra form-filling at a later date and it elso enabled my mother to hold her head up high from Day One. FWIW, I think the emotional side is every nit as important (if not more so) than the financial side. That said, I dithered around, wondering which strategy would really be best, etc. Then my sister told me firmly, "If we can apply for Permant Residence immediately then I think that that is what we should do." I reckon that it is very much easier when two headsare involved. Not always possible, I know,but useful when it is possible, my friend. Cheers Gill

Hi Westly Especially a dreadful female employed at the PVC at present. She works for DIAC, not Centrelink. However, she imagines that Policy is Law, so you can guess the rest! Cheers Gill

Hi Chris Biting the postman won't help! DIAC will communicate electronically if they can. Unlike the British Govt, the Aussie Govt seem to realise that vandalising the rain forests in order to make paper is undesirable and unnecessary. The only relevant person I whom I "know"is a man called johnbshepherd, who has made several posts on this thread. It seems to take ages before people like your Parents will hear from DIAC again. Re-read John's posts, I would suggest. Meanwhile, maybe, suggest to your Parents to leave the postman alone?! Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte Dave Brooking replied to my e-mail and I have sent you a Private Message, so please check your PM in-box. I live in a village about 5 miles north east of Southampton town centre and about 5 miles due east of Southampton Airport, more or less. Round here, we've had more snow than I had expected. We are so close to the sea that snow doesn't usually settle etc but it has done so for the last couple of days. Southampton Airport was closed for most of the day on Friday. all the bus services into and around Southampton were also suspended etc. The local Councils seem to have had a big push to minimise the number of potential injuries and they have put lashings of grit all over the local roads and pavements, so although we have had quite bad snowfall, the whole situation has been far more sensible than it was in late 2010. There was a documentary on TV last night about the Big Freeze between January and March of 1963. I can remember some of that very vaguely because my family actually lived in Malaysia most of the time but, back then, Dad's employers (Balfour Beatty) insisted that he must spend two years in the tropics followed by six months in a temperate climate. Dad had been sent on "home leave" in England that coincided with the Big Freeze. I was enrolled in a local primary school or something for the six months (aged 5) and I think Dad probably marched me to school and back every day because I can remember piles of snow that were taller than me and they seemed to be everywhere. I got the impression that this must be "normal" for England in winter. A few years ago, I read both of Hannah Hauxwell's books avidly. Barry Cockcroft, the journo, had found Hannah Hauxwell living on her own on a remote farm up in the Yorkshire Dales. He ghost-wrote a couple of autobiographes for her and he also made a couple of TV documentaries about her, all of which were best-sellers. Cockcroft asked Miss Hauxwell about the Big Freeze in 1963 but she said that the winter of 1947 was worse. I remember wondering why Miss Hauxwell's recollection was different from Barry Cockcroft's since they could both remember 1947? I discovered why last night! Apparently the winter of 1947 affected the north of England much more than the south but it seems to have been the other way around in 1963. Cheers Gill

Hi Chris Please forgive me for butting in. I just want to confirm that Alan Collett is right. My late mother had a Contributory Parent Visa. My Aussie sister was the sponsor. I live in the UK. Mum was British. For the purposes of the Balance of Family Test, Mum's only children were my Aussie sister and I. I assembled the documents for Mum's CPV application, so the error was my fault. I included a certified copy of my birth certificate but I forgot to include a copy of my passport or any evidence about my own place of residence. I realised my error at the very last minute -just before I sent the bundle of documents off to DIAC in Australia. I decided that it would not matter. DIAC would assume that I lived in my mother's country of origin - the UK - and, as it happens, I do. If they wanted a copy of my passport, DIAC would ask for it later, I reasoned. In the end, DIAC asked no questions about me at all and they did not ask for a copy of my passport. Cheers Gill

Hi Chris.H Would it cheer you up if you had a meeting with Immigration SA in order to explain your dilemma to them? Last time I heard, a lady called Anne Johnson was the boss of Immigration SA and everyone seems to speak very highly of her. If you phoned Immigration SA, they would tell you the name of their Manager (ie the overall boss of Immigration SA.) Alternatively, if you prefer, there is nothing to prevent you from moving to NSW without bothering to discuss the move with Immigration SA if you would prefer not to discuss it with the State immigration people in either of the two States. DIAC, which is a Federal Government department, has no relevance to the issues and is not conserned about what a sc 176 holder does or where s/he goes. From what I've been reading over the last 3 years or so, the politicians in the current Labor Federal Government dislike the idea of a new immigrant moving to a particular State and then failing to use the skills that enabled him/her to be accepted for immigration to Oz in the first place. When Senator Chris Evans (Labor) was the Minister for Immigration, he used to complain about the taxi drivers around Melbourne Airport. He said that he had questioned several of the taxi drivers and had discovered that, so Evans said, many of them were highly skilled professionals who had had very good careers in their countries of origin. They had moved to Melbourne in order to join family members who already lived in Melbourne but the new immigrants had not been able to secure skilled positions in Melbourne so they were driving taxis instead, according to Evans. He thought this was "all wrong!" Logic, therefore, suggests that Evans & Co would prefer to see you doing IT work in NSW than selling ice-creams on a beach in SA! Please accept my very best wishes for your family's future in NSW. Cheers Gill

Hi All https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=3491&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 Please see the link above. I do not know whether or not Ian Harrop has retired but I think that the MARA has fairly strict rules about all this. I certainly believe that Ian will probably have considered retiring because the recent changes to Australia's skilled immigation programme has decimated the volumes of work that RMAs (Registered Migration Agents) have been able to attract during the last 3 years or so. I think this is probably worse for RMAs in the UK than elsewhere because of the enfeebled state of £££ sterling against a basket of other currencies, including against $$$ AUD. Ian Harrop used to work for DIAC, as they are now called (the [Australian] Depaartment of Immigration And Citizenship. I heard that someone persuaded them to add "And" because otherwise they would have been called DIC....) I was told by another RMA that Ian Harrop came to the UK during the 1990s, to be the Principal Migration Officer at the Aussie High Commission in London. He then left DIAC - whatever its name was at the time - and became an RMA instead. I have always had masses of time for Ian Harrop. He has always been brilliant at getting a problem by the scruff of its neck and sorting it out. Kel87, I have no hesitation in recommending Ian Harrop to you. The "fees" sound quite reasonable because they are actually a description of the overall costs. Also, you have explained that you might run into problems because of your Hubby being Turkish etc. Have you come across a lady called "Professional Princess?" PP posts on the British Expat forum. That has some sort of "general chat" section, on which PP posts. She is English but her husband is Algerian. They used my friend George Lombard in Sydney. (PP calls him 'The Lombard!') Apparently, it took two years for the couple's PR visa to be granted but they got it in the end and moved to Perth. I love PP's posts because she is a very good writer with a wicked sense of humour. George Lombard always speaks very highly of Ian Harrop. George himself is also very, very good at being an RMA. I can't count the number of times that I have told visa applicants in strife, "Please relax. Thee and me will wail at Uncle George and I am sure he will be able to sort this out." He has never failed to succeed. https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=4208&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 If for any reason Ian Harrop cannot help then I would recommend George Lombard instead. Otherwise, stick with Ian unless he really has retired. Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte Again, many thanks for replying so quickly. I've heard of Armadale. I believe it is quite close to Jandakot and I remember going to a shopping mall that might have been in Armadale. Wherever the shopping mall was, there was a heat-shimmer coming off the ground when we got out of the car in the car-park for the place. It was late Feb/early March one year and I guess it must have been unusually hot in order to have produced a heat-shimmer. (Another year, I went out to Perth to visit my sister for Christmas. It was not particularly warm. Self lay on a lilo in Elaine's swimming pool, shivering, covered in goose-bumps but telling myself sternly, "There is a huge hole in the ozone layer right above Australia. Put up with this and you will get a rich chocolate suntan, however cold you might be. Think of Beauty, not Comfort!" ) Blighty has become a Third World country, only without the weather and the cuisine that can usually be found in any self-respectiing Third World country. Cameron is a clot and Gidiot is even dumber than the PM. I agree with your approach to contacting Dave Brooking. Give him a day or two to read his e-mails and this thread and then pester him, I suggest. He has a daughter so he's used to being pestered by the Monstrous Regiment of Wimmin. Meanwhile, I'm going to get cracking with Google Maps, Dave Brooking's address and YouTube, to get a better idea of where you are, where he is and what it all looks like. Cheers Gill

Hi again, Charlotte This is just to let you know that I have now sent an e-mail to Dave Brooking with a link to this thread. I have asked him to read the thread, just to get the general gist of the problem and I have asked him to pay particular attention to Westly Russell's detailed reply. If Dave goes walkabout, he always takes a laptop with him. So he will receive my e-mail within 24 hours even if he is not at home at the moment. You might want to e-mail him as well unless you have managed to reach Dave on the phone. If you want to e-mail him, the link is below: https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=5751&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 Cheers Gill

Hi Westly Tnanks very much for your reply, above. As I have just explained to LottieB, my own amateurish interest in Aussie Immigration is not good enough or detailed enough for me to be able to understand most of your detailed comments. For example, I've never been involved with an appeal to the MRT. I've always simply told the Original Poster, "The DIAC website is a doddle compared to the MRT-RRT website. I haven't a clue what one needs to do for an MRT appeal but I know that the time-limit for appealing is short, so please get an RMA involved without delay!" I then heave a sigh of relief when I hear that the OP has instructed an RMA. I am particularly interested in your suggestion that a beady RMA might be able to get the Parents Visa Centre to defer making any decision about LottieB's Mum, based on her meds. Anything that will delay matters is probably worth doing, I suspect. It would save wear & tear on LottieB's nerves, for a start! I could not agree with you more! I've always said, "I'm a lawyer. A lawyer is the poacher, not the gamekeeper. In the context of Aussie Immigration, the Minister is the landowner and DIAC is the Minister's gamekeeper. You won't find a good lawyer who will worry about whether or not the gamekeeper approves of the poacher's methods, my friend." Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte I'm fond of Dave Brooking. He is very thorough, very beady and he would not let you down. The best thing is to ask Dave Brooking to read this thread. He's a friend of mine so I'll send him an e-mail and ask him to do so. Westly Russell, in his lengthy reply to me, has suggested some very interesting ideas. I don't know enough about Aussie Immigration law and practice to be able to judge Westly's suggestions but I am a lawyer in the UK. Therefore I know that if a practitioner is really experienced and really understands their subject matter properly, the proper practitioner often makes suggestions or devises a strategy that an amateur like me would not have known about or been able to devise. You have queried Westly's question "RMOC?" The RMOC is the Review Medical Officer of the Commonwealth. The RMOC will re-do the original assessment of the visa applicant's meds and will consider any new medical evidence that the visa applicant might want the Migration Review Tribunal to take into account. If you appeal to the MRT, their staff would ask whether or not you want the RMOC to become involved but you are entitled to decline if you don't think it would be worthwhile. In 2009/2010, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration held a major Public Inquiry about the way that disabled people are treated by Aussie Immigration Law. The Human Rights lawyers turned out in force and argued that the way the Aussie Govt treats disabled people for the purposes of immigration is a breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ("the CRPD.") Australia has signed and ratified the CRPD but she did so under something called the "Optional Protocol." The effect is that the CRPD applies fully to anyone who already has a right to live in Australia permanently but it enables the Aussie Government to keep the Health requirement intact for Immigration purposes. Reading the case reports via AustLii over the years, I have been struck by the remarkably high number of occasions when the RMOC seems to have overturned the findings of the original MOC doctor. Eventually, the JSCM summoned Dr Douglas, the Chief Medical Officer [of the Commonwealth of Australia] and got him in for an oral evidence session, which was reported verbatim in Hansard. The JSCM had done its sums. They had found that the RMOC was declaring the visa applicant's meds to be fine on 51% of occasions when there has been an appeal to the MRT. The JSCM asked the CMO to explain this? Why was it that the RMOC appears to contradict the CMO so frequently? The CMO said that in a startingly high number of visa applications, the visa applicant never submits any medical information for the CMO to consider. If the Minister for Immi has not been provided with any medical evidence to consider, the visa application must be refused. Dr Douglas said that the seemingly high number of "contradictions" by the RMOC are not actually cases where the RMOC has contradicted the findings of the CMO because the CMO has never seen any meds for Visa Applicant Bloggs. There must be hundreds of people who just never get around to getting their visa meds done, I imagine, so they end up appealing to the MRT against a visa refusal that has only happened for technical reasons (non-submission of meds.) By the time it gets to the MRT, an RMA is also involved. The RMA insists that meds must be undertaken, which must then be considered by the RMOC, who advises the MRT that there is nothing wrong with the visa applicant's Health. The JSCM was Chaired by a politician called Michael Danby during this particular Public Inquiry. He asked the CMO how many visa applications are refused because no meds have ever been submitted? Dr Douglas said he didn't know because his MOC team doesn't keep track of that. Presumably, DIAC were not keeping track of these instances either because, before long, the MRT's case-reports started recording whether or not visa meds had been submitted for consideration by the CMO. Presumably, Bureaucracy kicked the can down the road to and into the MRT's garden! The link to the Public Inquiry is below. If you then click on "Public Hearings," Dr Douglas gave oral evidence during the two Public Hearings held in Canberra. Dr Douglas and the MOC team "live" at DIAC's Health Operations Centre in Sydney, professionally, so I suppose it was not difficult to get Dr Douglas over to Canberra. http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=mig/disability/report.htm Whereabouts do you live, please? I've almost certainly never been to the relevant suburb but I can look on a map and YouTube is brilliant. Whenever I've been out to Perth to visit my sister, it is the same experience as always happens with Family Tourism. The family in Australia decide that the visiting relly must be taken to see X, Y and Z [places.] The visiting relly hasn't got a clue where these places are but the relly doing the driving zooms along to the place and there is no time to keep up on the map on one's knee! Cheers Gill

Hi Westly It is always lovely to hear from you, so thanks very much for your reply to me and Happy New Year. I do not know whether it would be worth involving the RMOC with regard to LottieB's mother, so I decided to keep my own trap shut about the possibility. There is an old (2001) MRT case involving an old lady called Mrs Stoney. The link is below: http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/MRTA/2001/5963.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=Aged%20Parent%20visa%20%20%204005%20%20%20Stoney From the MRT report, my guess is that the decision not to offer the MRT any further medical evidence about Mrs Stoney was deliberate. I suspect that a decision to apply for MI had already been made and that the family just needed the MRT to affirm the visa refusal in order to trigger S351 of the Migration Act. That said, times change and best practice changes with them. I have not been following PIC 4005 recently, so I don't know the up-to-date case law and so forth. Also, I know zilch about medical matters. From what LottieB says, it sounds as if her Mum's dementia might be getting worse pretty quickly. I think that the only way I can really help is by encouraging LottieB to instruct a really good RMA as soon as possible, and then the RMA should be the person who offers the detailed advice. Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte Thanks very much for your speedy reply. Since you live in Perth, I'd change the game-plan with regard to which RMA. In Perth, I'd go to see Tony Coates at ISCAH: https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=5458&FolderID=394 Alternatively, I would think about Dave Brooking in Perth: https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=5751&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 Tony is based NOR and Dave is based SOR, I think. My sister lives in Jandakot, quite close to Jandakot Airport. Dave Brooking used to be a pilot in the RAF for many years, including a couple of years in the RAAF. He still has a pilot's licence and he now teaches flying, I believe, so I assume that he would want to live somewhere quite close to Jandakot Airport. (Jandakot is not Perth International Airport but, apart from saying this, I recommend Google Maps!) I think you would be able to get perfectly competent help from either Dave Brooking or Tony Coates so, as usual, I would suggest that you should consider contacting both of them (and think about the local geogaphy etc) before trying to choose between them. Much as you might like a trip to Sydney, I doubt that the legal situation with your mother could justify such an udea. You can get the legal work dealt with in Perth and then go to Sydney in order to have fun, I reckon. Cheers Gill

Hi LottieB I am so sorry to read about yours and your Mum's problems with the Meds. There have been many cases where an elderly Parent has applied for an onshore visa and s/he has failed to meet the Health requirement. If the MOC (Medical Officer of the Commonwealth) says that the Health requirement is not met, DIAC must - by law - refuse the visa application. The Parent (or, realistically, the RMA who is helping the family by this stage) lodges an *immediate* appeal to the Migration Review Tribunal. This has to be done pretty well immediately because I think that the time limit for lodging the appeal is only about 21 days. Therefore I agree with Westly Russell - don't wait until you receive the formal refusal. Get an RMA on board straightaway, I would suggest. The RMA can be ready to deal with the paperwork for lodging the appeal and so forth. The chances are that the MRT would affirm DIAC's original decision to refuse the visa. However, considerable time elapses between lodging an MRT appeal and the MRT actually dealing with it. The Parent might not survive the wait for the MRT to stir its stumps. However, if the Parent survives and the MRT affirm DIAC's decision to refuse the visa, it is not the end of the world. The MRT's decision to affirm DIAC triggers S351 of the Migration Act 1958. Under S351, it is possible to lodge an application for Ministerial Intervention. The application for MI is, in effect, an appeal directly to the Minister for Immigration. The Minister alone has the power to ignore the strict visa criteria if the Minister considers that it would be "in the public interest" to do so. The Minister is unlikely to think that it would be "in the public interest" to grant your mother a visa. Again, though, the Minister's personal opinion doesn't matter that much because legally, the whole thing has become a game of tactics by this stage. If the doctors say that their patient cannot travel, no airline willl carry him/her. Not even Qantas would do so and nobody, not even the Prime Minister, can overrule an airline in this situation. Effectively, then, the visa applicant is trapped in Australia by reason of ill-health and the Government has no choice but to accept the medical reality of the situation. Applications for Ministerial Intervention usually take 4 or 5 years to be decided. Therefore between the date of the visa refusal and the Government's eventual conclusion that it has no choice but to accept that the visa applicant has been trapped in Oz by reason of ill-lealth, at least 5 or 6 years will have elapsed, often longer. It is unlikely that a dementia patient in his/her eighties will live for long enough for the whole of the legal process to be concluded. DIAC simply grant a series of bridging visas that enable the old person to remain in Australia lawfully for the remainder of his/her natural life. This bit is not a problem. This "drill" has been done literally dozens (probably hundreds) of times in the past. It works. There is no doubt about that - it does work. It sounds much more daunting than it actually is, too. The trick is to find a really *good* RMA to give you a hand with the whole thing. You could do a lot worse than Westly Russell, actually. He has loads of experience, knows exactly what he is doing and he is very feisty. He lives and works somewhere in NSW, I believe. Please see the link below:- https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=728&FolderID=394 As an alternative, I would suggest George Lombard in Sydney. Again, George has tons of experience, he also knows exactly what he is doing and so forth. https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=4208&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 You are likely to have your own hands full with the practical job of looking after your mother. Therefore, I suggest, *delegate* the legal work to one of Westly or George. In your shoes, I would contact both of these men and make your decision based on which one you feel the most comfortable with. (In his posts on the internet forums, Westly comes across as being a bit spiky. However, I have exchanged several PMs with Westly over the years and he is not at all spiky in real life! He is also first rate in situations like yours.) I don't know many RMAs in South Australia. George Lombard always used to recommend Libby Hogarth in Adelaide. However, I exchanged a few e-mails with Libby in 2010. She said that she has been no longer has time to deal witn many clients herself, so she delegates most of the work to her staff. Libby said that she has become involved with asylum seekers or refugees or something, which takes her away from "ordinary" client work. I do not know whether she would agree to see you for a consultation but her details are below: https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=3258&FolderID=394 Please do NOT despair. There is zero need for that, my girl! Please also try not to worry. None of the RMAs who I have mentioned would ever let a client down and all 3 of the ones I have suggested know more than enough of the relevant Law and practice to ensure that silly, careless errors would not occur. Cheers Gill

There is no easy way to say this. My beloved Mother died, on Friday 19 October 2012, in Perth, WA, where she had been living since October 2006, on a Contributory Parent visa subclass 143. I would ask that everyone justs holds fire whilst I work out what to do next. Gill.

Hi Niki I know what is is like when one has to try to sort out a viable solution for a widowed parent. I've been through it myself, etc. I am very sorry to hear about your father, hon. I know that I can't say anything that will make it better but I found, when my own father died, that it helps to know that other people do care, even if they can't actually do anything. Your Mum. Please could you answer the following questions for me? 1. Is Mum British? If not, what nationality is she, please? 2. Has she ever been to Australia before? If not, do you think she would be able to settle well in Oz because you are there, irrespective of whether or not she really likes Australia once she goes there? 3. Are you thinking about moving Mum to Australia permanently? If yes, do you and she both want that to happen as soon as possible? Would she have to sell up in Cyprus first? If yes, how long would that be likely to take, do you think? 4. Could she afford a Contributory Parent or Contributory Aged Parent visa? Please study the stuff on the links below: http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/family/family-visas-parent.htm http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/booklets/books3.htm 5. I've just been reading that the Aussie Govt intends to introduce a new type of extended Tourist visa for Parents. Apparently every application will be considered on a case-by-case basis and blah blah but the intention is to introduce the idea of these new, extended visas by December 2012. As yet, I've only just seen very sketchy details in a newsletter that I get by e-mail from a firm of Registered Migration Agents in Oz. However, the gist seems to be that the Parent who wants to visit Oz repeatedly will be able to get a Long Stay Tourist visa that will allow repeated, lengthy visits over a period of up to 5 years. As yet, I don't know whether they'll do this simply by tweaking the legislative details about the subclass 676 Tourist Visa or whether they plan to introduce a Parents-only Version of sc 676. However, please see the link below for the sc 676 Tourist Visa because the new arrangements will not differ substantially from the sc 676 apart from the ability to make repeated visits to Oz without having to get a new sc 676 visa each time: http://www.immi.gov.au/visitors/tourist/676/ Why get Mum out to Oz for a short visit when she can make a long visit instead? I'll try to help in any way that I can but I need more background infomation first, please, as I have tried to explain. Finally, is Mum in reasonably good health at the moment? Cheers Gill

Hi SWMBO Parents are specifically excluded from eligibility for the Remaining Relative visa. The only way round this is where all the Parent's children are in Oz but all of the Parent's siblings are also in Oz. In that situation, a sibling in Oz can sponsor the offshore sibling and the offshore one's children are no loner relevant. So the Aussie Government has been onto this one for ages, unfortunately. Also, Australia makes a substantial amount of money out of the Contributory Parent Visa scheme, so it is no surprise that the CPV and Contributory Aged Parent Visa (CAPV) are the only ones that will secure PR for a Parent swiftly (albeit hideously expensively.) My mother has a Contributory Parent Visa that was granted in 2006. Before we made the application in 2005, Mum was dithering and making excuses. She thought it was very expensive at her age (she was then 83.) Mum was in the UK with me at the time and she tried to say that she wanted to go out to Australia, to chew the cud about the idea with my sister in Oz. I barked, "NO, Mother! I've talked to Elaine on the phone and she agrees that we should make an immediate application for a CPV. So that is what we will DO, gedditt?" I felt bad about bullying the old dear but with hindsight, thank god I did because the fees have been rocketing ever since. Cheers Gill

Hi Missymoo I suspect that you and I have come across the same woman at the PVC recently. Some friends of mine applied for a CPV for their mother/mother in law. The lady's daughter had been resident in Australia for 18 months and she had been a Permanent Resident for 12 months. From the facts, the daughter's lifestyle is as "settled" as it is ever going to become. However, a woman at the PVC quoted the Policy documents, interpreted Policy's meaning incorrectly, refused to discuss the question of whether or not she thinks the relevant facts add up to the idea that the daughter was "settled", she also refused to accept that Policy is not Law and she decided to ignore Naiker v MIMIA - only the leading case on the subject and absolutely binding on the Government unless either Naiker is overruled by a higher court or Parliament alters the relevant statute law. Naiker, said the PVC female, is old law (the case was about 10 years ago, I think.) She reckons that "old" case law can be - and has been - overruled by her own modern obsession with misinterpreting Policy instead. I'm a lawyer in England & Wales. Australian Federal Law does have a few features that are not found in English law but the way that case-law works, and the legal effect that it has, is very similar if not identical. I even e-mailed Nigel Dobbie, just to check that my own interpretion is water-tight, technically: http://www.ddilawyers.com/directors_profiles.php Nigel confirmed that the question of whether or not the prospective sponsor is "settled" is a question of fact and nothing else. The CPV applicant's son-in-law e-mailed the woman at the PVC but she wouldn't budge. I then e-mailed her myself, explaining exactly what I think the relevant Law is, why I think what I believe and blah blah. She told the son-in-law that she is entitled to dismiss my own contentions because they differ from her own interpretation of the Policy-cum-Law as she believes it to be. The only way to deal with the Gordian Knot is to cut it, as Damocles discovered thousands of years ago. The only way to cut this particular Gordian Knot would be if the family instructed Nigel Dobbie formally and sent him in to bat against DIAC. The son-in-law and I had both given it our own very best shots but Nigel is one of the biggest guns that there is in Australian Immigration law so he might succeed where we had failed, I felt. However, the family decided not to instruct a lawyer. They allowed the female from the PVC to bully them into withdrawing the CPV application instead. This, of course, will merely reinforce the bully's inaccurate conviction that she is correct, which will just cause unnecessary problems for other CPV applicants in the future but there is nothing I can do about that. The PVC's conduct was disgraceful, in my opinion. The bullying clerk said that the Manager of the PVC was on holiday at the time but refused to divulge any further details about the Manager than that. If it had been up to me, there would have been the mother & father of a battle with DIAC about this, conducted by Nigel Dobbie. I think it is very bad to give in about something like this because it hurts people who come afterwards. However, there was nothing I could do but I'll bet anything that you and I are describing the same female at the PVC. Cheers Gill

Hi Growler Is there something like Freecycle in Adelaide? http://uk.freecycle.org/ It seems to me that one needs to balance the cost of shipping elderly white goods against the likely cost of buying second-hand ones in the new location, that would do to be going on with until one has found one's feet properly etc. Growler, my Aussie sister used to swear by her top-loading washing machine. I was always suspicious of it because I reckon that the paddles in them have the potential to do far more damage to fabrics than just tumbling the fabrics around in a front-loader is likely to cause. Agitation of the fabric is the only thing that actually washes anything in a washing machine. (You should hear Ruth Goodman, the historian, on the subject! She has melted animal fat and mixed it with caustic soda and the whole bit as part of her experiments with the things that used to go on! According to Ruth Goodman, modern detergents deliver smell but they do not deliver anything that will actually clean the fabrics. She said that she had not used anything except water in her own washing machine for over 3 years. Mmmm. I decided that that takes purity a bit too far, so I've compromised with half a capful of washing machine liquid instead of a whole capful. Ruth Goodman is actually right. Reducing the amount of surfactant - which is all that it actually is - makes no difference to the eventual cleanliness. It just makes me feel better because I like the scent!) Yes, you can definitely put a single quilt into a top-loader. The drum is usually larger than the drum in a front-loader beause one does not have to wedge a top-loader under a work-surface. If it were me, I'd put a king-sixed quilt into a top-loader and see whether the lid will still shut. My sister's top-loader eventually died of old age after 25 years of regular use, so she now has a front-loader instead. She is less pleased with the new front-loader. That does not respond as readily to hubby crawling around with a spanner as the old one used to, she says! Cheers Gill