MARA and OMARA Explained: How Migration Agents Are Regulated in Australia
How the Migration Agents Registration Authority actually works: who administers it, what it takes to register, the offence for charging fees unregistered, and how to check any agent's status for free before you pay them. Figures as at September 2026.
Read the full guide, with official sources →
Watch
Chapters
- 0:00 Anyone can call themselves a migration agent.
- 0:12 Unregistered and charging a fee?
- 0:36 Search mara.gov.au
- 0:51 Becoming registered
- 1:10 Since 22 March 2021: not both
- 1:23 Appointing an agent
- 1:41 OMARA can discipline an agent.
- 1:56 "Government approved" isn't a separate scheme
- 2:11 Where to read more
Transcript
Anyone can call themselves a migration agent. Only someone on one specific register can legally charge you for that advice.
Giving immigration assistance, or charging a fee for it, without being registered is an offence under sections two eighty and two eighty one of the Migration Act.
The regulator is OMARA, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. It's been a branch inside the Department of Home Affairs since the first of July, two thousand and nine, when the function moved over from the Migration Institute of Australia.
OMARA's register at mara dot gov dot au is searchable by name, MARN, or business. It shows the registration status: current, or if not, whether it's expired, suspended, or cancelled.
Registering needs a Graduate Diploma, then the Capstone exam — run only by Legal Training Australia, for two thousand, one hundred and fifty six dollars. Then the registration charge: one thousand, seven hundred and sixty to start, or one thousand, five hundred and ninety five to renew.
Since the twenty second of March, two thousand and twenty one, an unrestricted legal practitioner can no longer also be OMARA-registered. Lawyers give migration advice under their own legal practice framework instead.
Appointing someone is a specific form. Form nine five six appoints your registered agent, lawyer, or exempt person — and can make them your authorised recipient too. Form nine five six A is only for appointing someone else, who isn't your adviser, to receive your correspondence.
If a registered agent breaches the Code of Conduct, OMARA can caution, suspend, or cancel their registration. What it can't do is order a refund — that's a separate civil matter, though its findings can be used as evidence.
The one thing worth remembering: "government approved migration agent" isn't a separate scheme. It's the same OMARA framework, described informally. Search their name or MARN yourself, and confirm the status before you pay anyone.
The full guide, with the official sources, is on migratio.com.au. The link is in the description. And if you'd like to talk it through, you can compare registered migration agents there, and see their fees before you book anything.
Talk it through with a registered agent
Every agent on Migratio is on the official OMARA register. Compare agents and their consultation fees.