Minister intervenes under s417

If the Minister intervenes in your case under s417 then he will grant you a visa to stay in Australia. Usually this will be a permanent visa which allows you to stay in Australia, but it can be any type of visa. The conditions of the visa you get will depend on which visa the Minister gives you.

Sometimes the visa the Minister gives include health care through Medicare and incomes support through Centrelink. Sometimes the visa the Minister grants gives a person no access to Medicare or no access to Centrelink for two years. You need to check the conditions of the visa carefully after you are granted a visa.
If you do get a visa with conditions which are not ideal for you, it is important to keep perspective that you have a permanent visa and that the conditions are temporary.

Unfortunately once the Minister has intervened in your case to grant you a visa, he cannot intervene again nor change the visa he has granted you. This is because the law says he can only intervene once in a person’s case.
If you are granted a permanent visa, then you may be eligible to apply for Australian citizenship at some point. To find out more about applying for Australian citizenship please click here.

Minister intervenes under s48B

If the Minister intervenes under s 48B this means you have another chance to apply to the DIAC for a Protection visa. Usually you are only allowed to apply for a Protection visa once. If the Minister intervenes under s48B then you have another chance to apply for a Protection visa.

Strict deadlines apply
If the Minister does intervene it’s important to know that you will usually only be given 7 days from the day you receive the letter to lodge another Protection visa application. Make sure you check the letter carefully to see when you have to apply and make sure that you meet this deadline. No extensions are possible to this deadline and you MUST lodge by this deadline otherwise you will lose your right to apply again and this cannot be reviewed.

Do I need to make a whole new Protection visa application?
You will need to complete a new Protection visa application to make sure that all your details are still accurate and correct. You need to update your statutory declaration to include the new information that was the reason(s) for the Minister allowing you to apply for a Protection visa again. If there is any other significant information which has changed or which was missed the first time you applied then you can also include that in this second application.

You should also keep any information that is still true and relevant from the first time you did a statutory declaration in this statement too. Remember also that just because the Minister has allowed you to apply for a Protection visa again does not mean the reasons you were rejected the first time are no longer of concern to the DIAC. They may still be of concern so it’s best to address them if you can in your statutory declaration.

If the Minister intervenes under s48B and gives you a chance to apply for a Protection visa again this means your whole case starts again when you make your second application. If you re apply and your case is unsuccessful at the DIAC, then you can go through all of the different stages of the process again. To remember the stages of the process and what will happen when you apply to the DIAC again please click here.