Search the current Code for the word "supervise" and you will not find it.
The former Code had a duty to exercise effective control of the office and to properly supervise the work of staff. The Code in force since 1 March 2022 replaced that with something narrower in wording and considerably harder to satisfy: responsibility for the quality, accuracy and timeliness of work you did not personally do.
The difference matters. Supervision is an activity — you can point to a process and say you did it. An outcome duty is measured by the output, and a diligent review that missed the error is still a missed error.
The boundary you are actually policing
Two provisions do different jobs, and practices routinely collapse them into one.
Section 23 is the hard line. An agent must take all reasonable steps to ensure that no member of the agent's business contravenes Division 2 of Part 3 of the Migration Act. That Division reserves five things to registered agents, and OMARA's guidance on practice management duties lists them: giving immigration assistance, charging fees for it, charging fees for making immigration representations, representing yourself as an RMA, and advertising as one.
Note who is caught. A "business" under the Code means the agent plus every individual related by employment to them, and "employee" is defined to include consultants, independent contractors and volunteers. The unpaid family member helping in reception is inside the definition.
What unregistered staff can and cannot do
The Code does not stop staff from working on migration matters. It stops them from giving immigration assistance. In practice that means clerical and administrative work is fine, and the risk sits in three specific places:
- Consultations. OMARA's guidance says staff should clearly explain their role during client consultations, making it plain if they are not an RMA and are not providing immigration assistance. A client who believes they received advice from an agent, when they did not, is a complaint waiting to happen.
- Written advice sent under someone else's name. If the analysis is not the agent's, the agent's name on it does not fix the problem — it creates a second one.
- Lodgement. OMARA specifically flags ensuring that an agent's MARN "is not improperly used by employees to lodge visa applications through ImmiAccount".
That last point is a Code duty in its own right. Section 25(3) requires an agent to take all reasonable steps to ensure their MARN is not used in a way suggesting immigration assistance given by another person was given by the agent. Section 25(4) then requires written notice to the Authority within 14 days of becoming aware the MARN is being used by someone else. Shared credentials make both obligations impossible to satisfy.
The quality duty, and exactly where it stops
Section 24(1) is the operative provision. An agent must take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality, accuracy and timeliness of any work performed by another person — including anyone in the agent's business — either to assist the agent in giving immigration assistance, or under a service agreement for which the agent is a responsible migration agent.
Three words carry the weight. Quality is not just correctness. Accuracy reaches the details a reviewer skims. Timeliness brings deadlines inside a duty most agents think of as being about content.
Then section 24(2) draws a boundary that surprises people in both directions: the duty does not apply to work performed by another registered migration agent.
For a principal, that means you do not answer under section 24 for a colleague's professional work. For an employed or contracted RMA, it means the opposite of what many assume — the fact that someone senior signs off does not move your own obligations anywhere. Each agent answers for their own conduct under sections 13 and 33 regardless of who reviews them.
Anyone who touches the matter may become a responsible agent
This is the provision that catches practices with informal internal help, and it is worth reading closely before you build a mentoring or second-opinion culture.
Section 12 defines a responsible migration agent in relation to a service agreement as each agent who gives, or has given, immigration assistance under it — or, if none has been given yet, each agent who signs it.
OMARA's guidance on the Code puts it starkly, quoting the explanatory statement: any migration agent who has been involved in a client's matter is a responsible migration agent, and "even an agent who gives input toward a matter would be a responsible migration agent, despite not having signed the relevant service agreement."
The guidance draws the line at generality. Answering a general question on a forum or over the phone is unlikely to engage section 12. Working in detail on a specific application for a specific client does — at which point that agent picks up the duties attached to responsible agents across fees, disbursements and completion of the work, on a matter they may never have been formally assigned.
If your practice runs an internal "ask an agent" channel, that is a status change waiting to happen, not just a helpful habit. Record who gave input on what.
Offshore staff are inside the same duty
OMARA's guidance is explicit that these Code obligations apply to all RMAs regardless of whether their premises are onshore or offshore, and in relation to staff employed in onshore and offshore businesses.
There is no distinction available on the basis that the work was done in another country, by a contractor, at a lower rate, or under a separate entity's name. If the work assists you to give immigration assistance, section 24 applies to its quality, accuracy and timeliness.
Making the duty evidenced rather than asserted
OMARA's guidance lists what the duty may include, and it reads as a control set rather than a philosophy:
- all client contact is recorded on the client file
- records are kept securely and confidentially for the periods the Code sets
- effective control of client accounts is maintained, so unauthorised staff cannot access client monies
- receipts are issued to all clients for all payments made
- the agent's MARN is not improperly used by employees to lodge through ImmiAccount
It then sets out what suitable supervisory arrangements may include: staff clearly explaining their role in consultations, reviewing visa applications before they are lodged, maintaining records of internal discussions with staff about client applications, and conducting regular training on Code requirements.
Two of those are worth pulling out. Pre-lodgement review is named as an arrangement, not implied. And "maintaining records of internal discussions with staff regarding client visa applications" means your internal supervision conversation is itself a record — which is convenient, because it is also the only evidence that the review happened.
The client-money control connects to a separate obligation. Section 50 restricts what may be paid into and out of the account holding client money, and section 50(2) requires you to demonstrate compliance to the Authority on request; our practical guide to trust accounting covers how access control and reconciliation fit together.
The supervision evidence test
Take three matters worked on by unregistered staff and answer:
- Can you show who did what on the matter, or only who it was assigned to?
- Is there a record of the pre-lodgement review, distinct from the lodgement itself?
- Did anyone lodge under an agent's ImmiAccount credentials who is not that agent?
- Is there a record of internal discussions about the application?
- Can you evidence training on the Code for every staff member, including contractors and volunteers?
- Did another agent give input without becoming a named responsible agent on the file?
Where a system helps
Most supervision failures are not lapses of judgment. They are attribution failures: work done by someone the record does not name, reviewed at a moment the record does not capture, lodged with credentials shared between four people.
The controls that fix it are structural — individual logins so actions attribute to a person, a review step that has to be completed by a named agent before lodgement, internal notes stored on the matter rather than in a chat thread, and access to client money that follows the role rather than the office.
LodgeHQ records who did what as a consequence of the work being done, which is the only kind of supervision evidence that survives contact with a busy month. Our guide to growing from solo to a team covers the wider transition.
Verify before you rely on it
The supervision provisions changed shape substantially in the current Code, and internal manuals written against "effective control of the office" are describing a repealed duty. Read the current text before you rewrite yours: OMARA's Code of Conduct page, the prescribed Code, and the Regulations on the Federal Register. Our Code compliance checklist walks the wider obligations.
This is general information for migration practices, not legal advice. Where a specific arrangement raises a question — an offshore team, a contractor RMA, a shared ImmiAccount — get advice on that arrangement.