Hi Dive Monkey
I can't help you with the time-frame for your visa because my own involvement was with a Contributory Parent visa for my mother. However, I can help with the AoS end of things for you because Parent-visas have an AoS too and the mandatory AoS works in the same way for all visas to which it applies.
The first thing to be aware of is that the Assurer is means-tested. For this reason, you can have up to 3 assurers who can between them meet or exceed the minimum assessable income threshold. You and he/she/they can work this out in advance and I recommend that you should.
Please see here:
http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=391
and here:
http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=214
Your Assurer will have to produce TANs for 2004/5, 2005/6 and payslips since 1 July 2006 in order to prove that the minimum income has been met or exceeded ever since 1 July 2004. This catches a LOT of people out and in my opinion the Centrelink interview is not the best time to learn for the first time that the Assurer doesn't meet the required income.
The CO issues a letter to you, asking you to pass the letter to your Assurer and to ask him/her to arrange to see Centrelink. The Assurer has to take the signed letter from the CO with him to the Interview. He also has to take Form SU 594 and the identity docs to go with it, plus the financial evidence. Please see here:
http://www.centrelink.gov.au/interne...ce_support.htm
The length of time it takes before Centrelink can see the Assurer varies. It took 2 weeks for my sister in Perth last August but I've heard of it taking longer than this in some places.
Once Centrelink are happy with everything else, they ask the Assurer to lodge the Bond. Again, they provide a letter which has to be taken to the Bank. It costs $150.00 to open the Bond Account, so make sure you transfer more than your Assurer will need for the Bond alone.
The Bank issues a couple of receipts which have to be taken or sent back to Centrelink to prove that the Bond has been lodged.
When Centrelink are finally content that their own end of things is complete, they notify DIMA electronically that this is so. They do it via some kind of data transfer to the DIMA mainframe in Canberra - nothing as simple as an e-mail to the CO. Apparently it takes the mainframe 24 hours to upload the data because it only does data uploads/downloads during the night according to my mother's CO.
So the confirmation that Centrelink are happy actually takes 48 hours to reach your CO because the data is uploaded to Canberra the first night and then downloaded to Adelaide the following night. (It makes one wonder why they don't just use carrier pigeons instead!)
Some branches of Centrelink will dawdle if they get half a chance. They said they had written to my sister authorising her to deposit the Bond for Mum. When the letter hadn't arrived 4 days later, my sister went back to Centrelink, told them she was on her way to the Bank to deposit the Bond, and that as the letter hadn't arrived she needed a copy to take to the Bank. The original letter took 3 weeks to reach my sister and dropped into her letterbox the week after Mum's visa had been granted.
She also took the Bank receipts back to Centrelink the same day as she lodged the bond, to prevent unnecessary delay there. Then the following week we both chased Centrelink daily till they confirmed that they had sent the OK to DIMA.
From the date of the Interview to the date of the grant was exactly two weeks but that was because we did not allow Centrelink to waste an iota of time. I've heard of Assurers peacefully waiting for a month for the letter to desposit the Bond, then they don't necessarily do that straightaway, then it can be a week or two before they get round to sending the proof of deposit to Centrelink etc etc.
So if you are impatient, I'd get your Assurer well and truly organised now, and try to instil a sense of urgency if you can.
Good luck with the rest of the process.
Gill
