Protection Visa Legal Services for Indonesians in Australia

What legal services does My Migration Lawyers provide to Indonesians on protection matters?

My Migration Lawyers acts for Indonesian nationals in Australia on Subclass 866 applications and protection refusals. That is the whole of the protection work. The firm assesses whether a protection claim exists, builds and lodges the application, prepares the applicant for the departmental interview, responds to requests for further information, and runs the matter at the Administrative Review Tribunal if the application is refused.

The firm is My Migration Lawyer Pty Ltd, trading as My Migration Lawyers, a law practice rather than a migration advice business. Protection matters are supervised by Weiwei Zhang, Principal Lawyer, who holds Law Society of New South Wales practising certificate number 115308. The office is at Level 1, 60 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000, open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and consultations are held by video with clients anywhere in Australia.

This article sets out what that work actually consists of, stage by stage, so you can see what you are engaging before you engage it. The law behind it is covered separately on our protection visa lawyers page and on the Subclass 866 protection visa page.

Who is allowed to give you immigration advice in Australia

Immigration assistance in Australia may lawfully be given by an Australian legal practitioner who holds a current practising certificate, or by a registered migration agent. Nobody else may give it, whether they charge you or not. A friend who has been through the process, an education agent, a community figure or a relative who has done it before is not permitted to prepare your protection application for you.

This matters more in protection work than anywhere else, because of section 48A of the Migration Act 1958. You generally get one protection visa application. Advice from somebody who cannot lawfully give it is not merely unregulated, it is unrecoverable, because the application it produces cannot be replaced.

You can check whether a person is entitled to advise you. Legal practitioners appear on the register maintained by the law society or legal services board in their state or territory. Registered migration agents appear on the register maintained by the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. Both registers are public and free to search, and it takes a minute.

What a Form 956 actually does, and what it does not do

Form 956 is the notice that appoints a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person to act for you. Once it is lodged, the Department and the Tribunal send correspondence to the representative, and the representative can deal with them on your behalf.

Three things a Form 956 does not do. It is not a power of attorney, so it does not let anybody make decisions for you or sign your application in your own place. It does not transfer responsibility for the truth of your claims, which stays with you. And it does not stop the Department dealing with you directly if it chooses to.

There is a related form, Form 956A, which appoints somebody only to receive documents. It does not authorise them to give immigration assistance. People sometimes sign one thinking they have engaged a representative. They have not.

What changes on your file once a lawyer is acting

The practical change is that the correspondence, the deadlines and the drafting move to somebody whose job it is to watch them. Department letters go to the representative as well as to you. A request for further information that arrives while you are at work does not sit unopened. A decision record that starts a review clock is read the day it lands.

The substantive change is different and more important. A represented protection application is built around the criteria. Each claim is stated so that it is unmistakably made, tied to the ground it is argued under, and supported by material the decision maker is required to consider. An unrepresented application is usually a narrative. A narrative can be true and still fail, because the decision maker is not obliged to construct your legal argument for you out of your story.

Appointing a lawyer is also not a signal to the Department. It does not slow your application, it does not attract extra scrutiny, and it is not read as an admission that your claim is weak. Representation is ordinary in protection matters.

Confidentiality and legal professional privilege

What you tell a lawyer for the purpose of getting legal advice is confidential and, in most circumstances, privileged. That is a legal protection, not a policy the firm has chosen to adopt, and it is a meaningful difference for a person who is frightened of what they are about to write down.

This matters in Indonesian protection matters in particular. People arrive at the first consultation having told nobody in Australia what happened, sometimes having told nobody at all. Some have not told their family, their church, their employer or the people they live with. Others are worried about a scholarship sponsor or a university. The first consultation is the point at which the full account has to come out, because a claim that is disclosed late is far harder to run than one that is unattractive from the beginning.

The firm's confidentiality obligations do not depend on you going ahead with the matter afterwards.

What My Migration Lawyers does not act in

The firm acts in partner visas and protection visas, including refusals of both. It does not act in every immigration matter, and it is better to say so on the way in.

The firm does not act in offshore humanitarian applications, meaning the Refugee and Humanitarian subclasses lodged from outside Australia. It does not act in judicial review proceedings in the Federal Circuit and Family Court. It does not act in matters where the honest assessment is that no protection claim exists and no other visa is available, because taking that engagement would spend your one protection application for nothing.

And it does not promise outcomes. No lawyer can. Protection decisions turn on the decision maker's assessment of credibility and of country information, and any representative who tells you what the result will be is telling you something they cannot know. What can be promised is the work: the assessment, the preparation, the submission and the representation. Our visa refusals page covers the position where a different visa has been refused.

Stage one: the assessment that happens before anything is lodged

The first piece of work is deciding whether you have a protection claim at all, and if so, which ground it runs on. Nothing is lodged before that question is answered.

The assessment covers what you fear, who you fear it from, what has already happened, whether the fear connects to one of the five Convention reasons in section 36(2)(a), and if it does not, whether it reaches significant harm under section 36(2)(aa) and section 36(2A). It also covers the two provisions that kill more Indonesian claims than any others, internal relocation and state protection, both of which sit in section 36(2B).

Some assessments end with advice not to lodge. That is a real outcome of this stage and it is the most valuable thing the stage produces, because the alternative is spending your one application on a claim that cannot meet the criteria. Where another visa fits better, that is where the conversation goes instead, and for many people that means a partner visa rather than protection. See our partner visa lawyers page.

Why we verify your immigration history instead of asking you for it

You will not be asked to produce your bridging visa grant notice, your old visa application forms, your previous passports or a copy of a tribunal application from years ago. Most people do not have those documents and chasing them wastes weeks.

The firm obtains the immigration history itself. Visa status and conditions come from VEVO using the passport details already on file. Where the history is incomplete or disputed, the firm requests the relevant departmental and tribunal records. This matters in protection matters because the history is not background, it is evidence. Dates of arrival, the exact conditions on each visa held, what was said in earlier applications and when each application was made all bear directly on credibility and on whether a claim arose before or after you came to Australia.

What is asked of you is what you can realistically produce. Your passport. Your Indonesian identity card. Documents about the events themselves. Anything you already have.

Stage two: finding every claim before the application is lodged

Because of section 48A, the first protection application is normally the only one. A claim that is not made in it is very difficult to raise afterwards, and the section 48B power that could allow a second application is personal to the Minister, non-compellable, and not an appeal.

So the second stage is deliberately slow. It goes back through the history looking for claims the client has not recognised as claims. People routinely omit things because they assume they do not count. A conversion that upset a family. A relative's political activity that attaches to them by association. An incident with police that they thought was ordinary corruption. Something they posted online years ago. An event they find shameful. In Indonesian matters the most commonly omitted claim is the one the client is least willing to say out loud.

Each candidate claim is then tested against the criteria rather than accepted at face value, because a claim that cannot meet a criterion still has to be dealt with properly if it goes in.

Stage three: drafting the statement

The personal statement is the centre of a protection application, and drafting it is the largest single piece of work in the matter. It is taken from you in a structured interview rather than written from a questionnaire you fill in alone.

A statement that works is chronological, dated, specific about places and people, and consistent with everything else on the file, including things you said in a student or visitor visa application years earlier. It states each claim expressly. It explains gaps, changes of account and delays rather than leaving them to be discovered. It says what you fear will happen on return, and why, in terms that connect to the criteria.

A statement that fails is usually not dishonest. It is vague about dates, silent about a weakness the decision maker will find anyway, and written in a register that sounds like a submission rather than a person. The drafting is done with you, read back to you, and corrected until you are prepared to swear to it, because you are the person who will be asked about every line of it at the interview.

How country information is matched to an Indonesian claim

Ministerial Direction 84, made under section 499 of the Migration Act, requires a decision maker to take into account the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade country information report on Indonesia where it is relevant. Working with that report rather than against it is most of the craft in an Indonesian file.

The submission does three things with it. It identifies the passages that support the claim and cites them precisely rather than attaching the whole report. It confronts the passages that cut against the claim, because a decision maker who finds an adverse passage you ignored will weigh it more heavily than one you addressed. And where the report is out of date on a point, it puts newer material in front of the decision maker instead of complaining that the report is old. The revised Indonesian Criminal Code, in force since 2 January 2026, is the clearest current example.

Religious claims and claims based on sexual orientation or gender identity each have their own country information problems. Those are covered on our religious persecution page and our LGBTI protection visa page.

How relocation and state protection are dealt with in the submission

Relocation and state protection are raised in the submission before the Department raises them, because in an Indonesian matter it will.

On relocation, the submission has to say why Jakarta, Surabaya, Denpasar or wherever the decision maker has in mind is not a reasonable answer for this applicant. That means evidence about the reach of the people feared, about registration requirements for internal movement, about whether the applicant could actually subsist there, and, where the harm feared is from the state, about the fact that the national police and the armed forces are not local institutions.

On state protection, general assertions do not work. What works is the specific record: the complaint that was made and what happened to it, the connection between the perpetrator and local officials, the evidence that a payment changed an outcome. Where there is no such record, the submission has to explain why, rather than leaving the silence to be read against the applicant.

Documents, translation and identity evidence

Every document not in English needs a translation, and the translation has to be one the Department will accept. Documents are assembled, indexed and paginated before lodgement rather than sent through in pieces, so the decision maker reads the file in the order it was meant to be read.

Identity gets particular attention in Indonesian matters. Section 91W lets the Department draw an adverse conclusion where an applicant fails to produce documentary identity evidence without a reasonable explanation, and section 91WA deals with bogus documents. Where a document came from an agent in Indonesia and its provenance cannot be explained, that is worked through before lodgement, not after a departmental question about it.

Where a document genuinely cannot be obtained, the submission says so and explains why, with whatever secondary evidence exists.

Preparing you for the protection interview

Interview preparation is a distinct piece of work and it is not rehearsal. Nobody is told what to say.

What happens is that you are taken back through your own chronology until you know it, shown where the officer is likely to probe, and told plainly which parts of your account are the weakest and why. You are told what the officer is actually testing, which is consistency and plausibility rather than the strength of your feelings about it. You are told that "I do not remember" is an acceptable answer and an invented detail is not. And the arrangements are dealt with in advance, including requesting an interpreter in the language you are genuinely strongest in rather than the one you think sounds best. Our protection visa interview page sets out the format of the day.

Responding to a request for more information or a natural justice letter

After lodgement the Department may write asking for more information, or may put adverse material to you and invite comment. Both letters carry a deadline, and both are turning points in the matter.

A request under section 56 asks for further information and sets a period to provide it. A natural justice letter is more serious. It tells you what the Department considers to be information that would be the reason, or part of the reason, for refusing the application, and invites your comment before the decision is made. Getting a letter of that kind is not a formality and it is not a good sign, but it is an opportunity: it is the last chance to deal with the problem before a refusal exists.

The work here is reading precisely what has been put, answering exactly that, and providing the evidence that meets it. Long general replies that do not engage with the specific concern are the most common way this stage is wasted.

Where a refusal leaves you, and what happens to the deadline

A protection visa refusal starts a short, strict clock for review by the Administrative Review Tribunal. In the usual case the period is 28 days from the day you are taken to have received the decision, and the Tribunal has no power to extend it. A shorter period applies to a person who is in immigration detention.

Two details do the damage. The clock runs from deemed receipt, not from the day you actually read the letter, so an out of date address in ImmiAccount can end the review right before you know a decision exists. And the bridging visa position changes at refusal, which is a separate problem running on its own timetable.

If a refusal has already happened and the deadline is close, the review application is lodged first and the argument is built afterwards. The firm treats that as an urgent instruction. The background is on our protection visa refusals page and in our Administrative Review Tribunal guide for Subclass 866 refusals.

What representation at the Administrative Review Tribunal involves

Review at the Tribunal is a full merits review. The Tribunal makes the decision again on the material before it, can take new evidence, and will usually hold a hearing at which you give evidence yourself.

Representation at that stage is a distinct body of work. It starts with obtaining and reading the Department's file, so that the actual reasoning behind the refusal is known rather than guessed at from the decision letter. It then involves identifying which findings are the load bearing ones, assembling evidence that goes to those findings, making written submissions before the hearing, preparing you to give evidence, and attending the hearing with you.

The Tribunal is not a rubber stamp and it is not a rehearing of the same material. New evidence is admissible, which is why a refusal is often the point at which a matter that was poorly prepared the first time can finally be put properly.

What it costs, and how fees are structured

The government charge for a Subclass 866 protection visa application is AUD 50, and that single charge covers everyone included in the one application. It is payable to the Department, not to the firm.

Professional fees are separate and are quoted for your matter, not from a price list. The firm works on fixed fees agreed in advance rather than hourly billing, so the amount is known before work begins. A written costs agreement setting out the scope, the fee and the stages is provided before any work starts, and nothing is charged until it is signed. Fees are not published on this website because the work varies too much between matters for a published figure to mean anything useful.

Third party costs sit outside both of those. Translation of Indonesian documents, and any medical or psychological report that a matter needs, are charged at cost and are discussed with you before they are incurred.

Do you need a migration lawyer in your own city?

No. A protection matter is run on documents, correspondence and, at the Tribunal, a hearing that is commonly conducted by video. Where your lawyer sits has almost no bearing on it.

My Migration Lawyers holds consultations by video with clients anywhere in Australia, and runs protection matters for clients in every state and territory from the Sydney office at Level 1, 60 Martin Place. Indonesian clients in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra are on the same footing as clients in Sydney.

What does matter is whether the person acting for you has run protection matters, understands the Indonesian country information, and will be the one doing the work rather than passing your file down. Ask that question of anyone you are considering.

Can you change representatives part way through a matter?

Yes. You may change your representative at any stage, and doing so does not restart your application, invalidate it, or count against you. A new Form 956 is lodged, the previous representative's authority is withdrawn, and the file moves across.

It is worth doing where the application has stalled, where you cannot get a straight answer about what stage the matter is at, where you were advised to lodge a protection application that you do not think you have a basis for, or where something was put in your application that you did not say. The last of those is serious and needs to be dealt with before the interview rather than at it.

The one thing that does not change is the record. Everything already lodged stays on the file, which is why the earlier the change is made the more can be done with it.

What to bring to the first consultation

Bring your passport, your Indonesian identity card if you have it, and any family card or birth certificate you hold. Bring anything connected to the events themselves: police reports, medical records, court or summons documents, membership or baptism records, photographs, messages or screenshots with the dates and account names visible.

Bring a rough chronology, even a handwritten one. Dates of arrival in Australia, dates of the events in Indonesia, and dates of anything you have already lodged with the Department. You do not need to have it neat and you do not need to have translated anything yet.

If you have already lodged an application, or received a letter or a decision from the Department, bring that too. If you have a deadline running, say so at the start of the consultation rather than at the end.

How to engage My Migration Lawyers on an Indonesian protection matter

The first step is a consultation. You can request a consultation through the form, or contact us in writing if you would rather set out the situation first. The office is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

At the consultation the matter is assessed, you are told whether a protection claim exists and on which ground, and you are told plainly if it does not. If the firm acts, a written costs agreement follows setting out the scope, the stages and the fixed fee, and work begins once it is signed and a Form 956 is lodged.

Protection matters are supervised by Weiwei Zhang, Principal Lawyer, and you can read more about Weiwei Zhang and about how the firm works on our about page. If your situation is closer to the general question of what is available to an Indonesian in Australia, start with the complete guide to the Subclass 866 protection visa, or, if you are a student, with Can Indonesian students apply for a Subclass 866 protection visa.