Tristan Podger: registration suspended by OMARA on 22 Apr 2025

What the Authority decided

On 22 April 2025, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (the Authority) decided to suspend the registration of Registered Migration Agent (RMA), Tristan Podger (MARN:1679089) for a period of six months and until the Agent meets the specified conditions.

The Authority is satisfied that:

• The RMA is not a person of integrity, or is otherwise not a fit and proper person to give immigration assistance; and
• The RMA breached his obligations under section 13(1), 14(1), 14(2)(a), 17, 18(1)(a), 33(c), 33(d), 33(e), 35, 50(1)(d)(i), 52(3)(a)

The Authority found that the RMA:

• Did not act professionally and treat their client with appropriate respect
• Did not have appropriate arrangements in place to cover absences and therefore failed to respond to their client in a timely manner and have due regard to actioning their clients’ matters in a timely way
• Did not comply with migration law and acted in a way to defeat the purpose of migration law
• Did not maintain client confidentiality
• Failed in their duty in relation to client money
• Did not ensure there were sufficient funds in their client account to cover refunds that became payable.

The decision summary can be found below.

On 22 April 2025 the agent lodged an application for review of Authority's decision with the Administrative Review Tribunal

On 28 July 2025 the Administrative Appeals Tribunal affirmed the Authority's decision.

On 1 December 2025 the suspension was lifted.

The decision summary above is reproduced from the Authority's published record of this decision, which also carries the decision document itself. Nothing has been added to it.

What a suspension means if this was your agent

The registration is suspended for a set period. During it the agent may not lawfully give immigration assistance — not to you, not to anyone. Section 280 of the Migration Act makes paid immigration assistance by an unregistered person a criminal offence, and a suspended agent is unregistered for the duration.

This is the outcome that most often catches people mid-matter, because the agent is still there and the suspension has an end date. If your matter can wait, it may be able to wait. If you have a response deadline from the Department inside the suspension period, it cannot.

If this was your agent: the first week

1. Find out where your application actually is. If you have an ImmiAccount, log in. The clock does not stop because your representation did.
2. Check who the Department is writing to. A Form 956 makes an agent the authorised recipient, and correspondence sent to them is taken to have been given to you. A deadline sent to an inbox nobody reads is still a deadline.
3. Get your file. Your documents are yours and the Code requires them back — originals first. How to get your file back.
4. Work out what was paid and what was done. Ask for the itemised invoices and receipts the Code requires. Routes to recover money work better started early.
5. Complain, if there is something to complain about. A published decision does not close your own file. Where to complain, and what OMARA can and cannot do.
6. Only then, find someone else. A new agent needs the file and the dates. The first five steps are what make that first conversation useful instead of exploratory.

What this decision does not mean

It is a decision about one individual on one date. Only a person can be a registered migration agent — a company cannot — so it says nothing about anyone else at the same practice. Decisions of this kind are reviewable, and bars and suspensions expire. The register is where the current position lives.

Decision information sourced from the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. VisaBid is not affiliated with OMARA or the Department of Home Affairs.