Let's continue the discussion here instead

geir Hi Geir

Thanks very much for your latest news. I thought you had gone a bit quiet!

The MP sounds like an excellent ally. If she makes a fuss to the Minister, the Minister will require answers from DIMA's most senior management. They will fall over themselves to keep the Minister happy because their job is to support La Vanstone through thick and thin and to improve her image as much as they can. Obviously, the senior managers have much greater powers of execuive decision-making than any of the ordinary staff whom you have had to put up with so far.

It seems reasonably clear that all of your own visa-hbuttle stems from the fact that the DIMA delegaton in Berlin gave you "advice" that was wholly inadequate as well as technically inaccurate. It seems to me that natural justice demands that DIMA itself should now foot the bill for the cost of putting matters right for you without further delay.

Why can't DIMA pay to fly you to Auckland and to put you into a hotel there for a month? There is no reason why they couldn't fast-track your spouse application from there. Also, the medical could be done by Health Services Australia (the doctors who are the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth) before you leave for Auckland or wherever else is nearest. With onshore applications, HSA are the only doctors allowed to carry out the medicals. A doctor is a doctor. It is absurd to insist that you see a doctor offshore when you are in Australia at present. Getting the meds done reasonably soon would save time.

There is a precedent for DIMA giving an Undertaking to pay the bill for sorting out a mess caused by DIMA. Here is the link:

You may already be aware of the Kiane case, which was a tragedy. The Ombudsman got involved several times - not that it did much good, because DIMA did not honour the promises that it had made to the Ombudsman. Mr Kiane then committed dissolution so I don't know what happened about his wife's application in the end.

However, there have recently been some hi-level Inquiries into the activities of DIMA as you know. They have been criticised as being, "Process rich but outcome poor." I gather that heads have been rolling within DIMA in recent months in an effort to alter the culture of "mindless zealotry" which had arisen. Sounds like a few more heads need to roll before this thing will be over and DIMA will cease to be targeted by pressure groups and by people like you. But you never know - the culture might eventually improve.

Nothing will happen unless enough people make enough of a fuss, which is why I support you 100%. If a Government Agency is not functioning properly, public criticism of it is justified and justifiable. If you stifle freedom of speech, you stifle democracy with it. Anyway, anyone who thinks that you are making an unreasonable fuss ought to try reading some of the material published by David Bitel of Parish Patience, a firm of prominent Immigration lawyers in Sydney. He does a lot of work with refugees and asylum seekers, and his firm recently won the big Court case about the foreign students who had been wrongly expelled from Australia; that is going to force the Government into having to pay several millions in damages to the students who suffered, according to the Australian Press. David Bitel, in his articles (which are on the firm's website) is FAR more critical of DIMA than you have been, my friend, and he does not mince his words. The articles are well worth reading because writes very fluently.

Hopefully. with the help of the MP, a way can now be found to extricate you from the mess that DIMA's own staff seem to have been responsible for landing you in, and to do so quickly.

Please let me know when there is further news, and I hope that the news will all be of good progress from now on.

Best wishes

Gill