Questions about permanent residence and RRV

[Philip]

In 1988 my parents and I applied to migrate from the UK to Australia and we were granted PR immediately from the day we arrived. My dad and I became citizens in 1990 and then we moved to another country. My mum did not meet the residency requirement at the time we left, so she could not become a citizen when we did.

After that we only visited Australia for short holidays, she would have used her initial visa to enter which was probably valid until 1993. When this visa expired she applied for an RRV from outside Australia shortly, and received a 5-year RRV. She continued doing the same after each visa expiry, and she was repeated granted 5-year RRVs, even though she would only have spent about 2-3 months inside Australia across each visa. In between, she would have had no visa at all.

In 2015 or so her final RRV expired and she hasn't been to Australia again.

My first question is, is she still technically a permanent resident of Australia? If not, when exactly was this status lost, was it lost every time her RRV expired and then regained when she received a new RRV? (We wish to know if Australia still considers her a PR for a matter relating to another country, not relevant to this forum. Not sure how easy it is to get a concrete answer out of Aus immigration.)

My second question is, based on the replies to other RRV threads in this forum, it sounds like she would have difficulty getting another RRV now, because she hasn't spent much time in Australia ever, and her only tie is me being a citizen. I am also curious as to whether the rules changed in the past few years, because it sounds like she would only get a 3-month RRV if granted at the moment, yet she always received a 5-year RRV in the past.

Furthermore in my searching I came across this post https://www.munrodoig.com.au/recovering-permanent-residency-after-a-long-absence-from-australia/ which claims that someone was granted an RRV, and extremely quickly to boot, despite having tourist visas in the interim. So perhaps my mum might still get an RRV quite easily, although covid may have played a part in that case and it is less of a factor now. (My mum never has never held a tourist visa.)

Many thanks.

[paulhand]

There are a lot of questions here, but in summary … permanent residence ceases if you are offshore and your permanent visa expires. It can be regained by being granted an RRV. RRV legislation changed some years ago to limit 5 year grants to applicants who had spent 2 years of the previous five years in Australia, everyone else gets a year in most circumstances. We could easily fill an hour’s consultation with all the details!

[Philip]

Thanks for your reply, yes we would definitely use a migration agent if she wishes to attempt resuming her PR.