Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're debating the Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2019 and the Migration Agents Registration Application Charge Amendment (Rates of Charge) Bill 2019, but you'd never know that because most of the debate that has happened in this chamber about these bills has been about entirely unrelated matters. Senator McKim at least had the good sense to refer to some bits of the legislation, and I thank him for his contribution in that regard. But, golly, the Labor contribution was nothing short of irrelevant.

Let's talk about what this legislation actually does. It really is pretty simple. This government believes that we should impose the lightest possible amount of regulation on people who are in business, professions or anywhere in the Australian community while still ensuring that we have an appropriate amount of consumer protection. That shouldn't be a controversial proposal, yet up until the review that was conducted back in 2014 of the operation of OMARA, the office that regulates migration agents, those legal practitioners—in essence, registered lawyers—who also were registered as migration agents had to comply with two sets of regulation.

There's no real advantage to having lawyers who practise in the area of migration registered under two regulatory regimes. They both aim to do the same thing. In many respects the standards that are faced by legal practitioners under state regulation are in many ways more rigorous, yet there was a complaint levelled from Senator McKim on behalf of the Australian Greens that this is somehow a drop in standards. No. We're keeping legal practitioners subject to the very high standards that apply to legal practitioners under state regimes. Those penalties for failing to comply with the regimes in place for the regulation of solicitors, legal practitioners under state regimes, often involve civil compensation. They involve disciplinary action. They involve criminal action in many cases when the wrong thing has been done by a person seeking representation for migration work. So there's really no compromise in the standard that we're setting for people who want to practise in this area.

But we are doing something that's really important, something that aligns very well with our values: we are cutting the burden of government regulation. It's got to be an uncontroversial proposition. Why should somebody practising in this area have to comply with two regulation regimes when they could comply with one, noting that it is the one that imposes the higher standard of the two? It seems pretty common sense. Maybe that explains why Senator Keneally talked about everything else under the sun and not the bill—because anyone who'd read the bill would go, 'Well, that's actually pretty sensible.' So, for those people who operate in the industry, those people who will need to adapt to this regime, they might need a little bit more detail about how this is going to work.

I mentioned that this change comes out of the review of OMARA that was conducted in 2014. The No. 1 recommendation from that was that legal practitioners be removed entirely from the MARA regime—the migration agents regulation program at the Commonwealth level—and be entirely regulated by their state professional bodies. This bill implements that. There's been a lengthy consultation process, though, in between that report and the present time, and that means that stakeholders across the industry that provides migration advice have been engaged with at length. And the government's committed to continuing that engagement, particularly as the industry adapts to this new arrangement.

One big benefit that this will provide for people operating in the industry in circumstances where they've got a legal practitioner's practising certificate is that they're not going to have to pay the registration and licensing fees for two systems. At a time when many in business are doing it tough and people in the professions are doing it tough, to make it possible for those practitioners to pay one set of fees instead of two would, I thought, have been welcome from all political colours in this chamber. It should be uncontroversial that fewer fees, fewer burdens and fewer encumbrances to people getting ahead in business would be a good thing. But that's what the bill does; it makes it so that those people practising in the industry only have to face the levies, dues and registration fees for one regulatory regime rather than two.

It's really important to note, though, that consumer protection hasn't been forgotten. Lawyers who have practising certificates and who intend to practise in the migration advice field still have access to high-quality educational offerings through their professional associations, and they would retain access to the resources that are produced at the commonwealth level to help make sure we're getting quality advice in the migration field. It is also really important to notice that there will remain highly rigorous processes for consumers who have complaints to be able to get justice. They will be heard, investigations will be conducted and the only difference will be who is doing it. It'll mean that those people who aren't legal practitioners will be investigated by OMARA and those people who are legal practitioners will be investigated by the processes of state and territory law societies. And that's the way it's handled in the states at present in all complaints against a legal practitioner relating to every other field of advice.

In many ways it was a little counterintuitive that, just for those who deal with migration advice, complaints against a legal practitioner were dealt with in a place other than where they would be in every other field of law. field of law would be investigated against a legal practitioner.

People who are working in the industry, though, might be concerned about the way this bill will affect people who, early in their career, are on restricted practising certificates. For those who aren't in the industry, it's worth noting that when someone becomes a solicitor, a legal practitioner, they're put on a restricted practising certificate, usually for a period of two years. That means an experienced lawyer needs to supervise them in their work to help them adapt the ethical approaches and the good practice management practices—and in many ways the analytical rigour and even the self-care—associated with becoming a great contributor to the profession. But of course when you're in that phase you might, if you were to read this bill at face value, be confused about which regime you'd fall into under this new arrangement.

So, we've put in provisions to make it very clear. People who are in that early-career phase where they are supervised can remain on application covered by both regimes in that early period, and that will cover them up to the time when they are released from that supervision period. And that's something that can be arranged with OMARA. It's a commonsense, practical solution that deals with the fact that, as a matter of practicality, people are subject to supervision early in their career. It's worth noting, though, that the references in the bill to people who are subject to restricted practising certificates isn't a reference to people who are subject to supervision for disciplinary or misconduct reasons; that's treated very differently.

Future legal practitioners who have restricted practising certificates will be able to register with OMARA during the two-year eligible period if they've completed the graduate diploma on migration law and practice and the Capstone assessment that was introduced in 2018. Those were brought in to make sure that we are equipping the industry with high-quality practitioners who really know what they're doing and who are well equipped to help often vulnerable people in our community to get the quality advice they need and that we are equipping those practitioners to offer value for money because they really know what they're doing. Future legal practitioners who have not completed those requirements won't be registered with OMARA, but they will still be able to provide immigration assistance in connection with legal practice, and they'll be regulated by their legal professional and disciplinary body.

This is a measure that's been put in place to make sure that people in that early-career supervision phase don't suffer unfairness or hardship as a consequence of these changes. It really is a transition arrangement. An unrestricted legal practitioner, for those watching at home, is a lawyer who has got through that early phase of supervision in their career. They're allowed to be admitted as a lawyer, they're granted a legal practising certificate, they've completed their supervised practice and they've been granted that right to practice without supervision in their state. Once you've got that, if you're someone who's practising in the migration field, you'll be able to do so simply by following the disciplinary arrangements that are put in place by your state or territory legal professional regulation body.

This is a great opportunity to sing the praises of those bodies. I am a Queensland legal practitioner, a member of the bar—a proud member of the Queensland Bar Association—and I have been admitted as a solicitor in the past. While no profession is perfect, I can say with great confidence that the professional associations in Queensland invest heavily in the expertise, in the qualifications and in the good judgement and ethics of practitioners at all levels and work really hard to make sure that people who are practising, whether they're at the start of or towards the more senior end of their careers, have access to the kind of guidance they need in order to make good calls on behalf of members of the community who need help. I have great confidence that those professional associations will continue to do the great work that they do in relation to every other area of law and practice for regulating practitioners and making sure that they are ethical and ensuring that consumer complaints are investigated. I have great confidence that they will also do that well in relation to the field of migration.

The consequence, I suppose, of passing that responsibility over to the states might seem obvious, but I'll pop it on the record. That is, that the OMARA will no longer be able to investigate any existing complaints concerning Australian legal practitioners who are providing, or who have provided, immigration legal assistance and who are not continuing migration agents of a registered kind or former registered migration agents. People who have lodged those complaints will need to re-lodge them with state and territory law associations, and that means that from this point onwards there will be a separation of who investigates what. That makes sense; we don't need to expend Commonwealth resources on investigating things that will remain within OMARA's remit when we already have resources paid for and invested in by practitioners to be delivered at the state and territory level.

As somebody who is an enthusiastic federalist, it pleases me greatly to see more power and more responsibilities being provided back to the states and being provided back to the local professions, and being provided in a way that is decentralised from the Commonwealth. One of the benefits of doing that is competitive federalism. We get to see how things are done in Queensland and compare that to how it's done in New South Wales. Granted, there is a lot of collaboration between people in different states, but we can compare how things operate in Victoria, WA, South Australia or the Territory and harness the competitive natures of these professions to encourage them to do ever better in their provision of services to clients in our community.

Federalism offers many benefits, but seeing responsibilities handed back to the states and the state and territory associations, as this bill does, is consistent with those principles of competitive federalism, and it's consistent with our overarching commitment to always reducing the regulatory burden—always reducing the fees and charges that are faced by people in business and the professions, and always making it simpler and easier to go about your work and your life.