Case Law Updates

Federal Court: "There are a number of troubling aspects of the Tribunal’s reasoning which could, at an impressionistic level at this stage, give rise to a successful appeal. Just by way of example, they include the following... The Tribunal appears to have held it against the applicant that he failed to provide explicit photographs of him and his partner engaging in homosexual sex to prove that he is homosexual".

Federal Court. Can it be said that the risk of harm to the applicant from violence and crime upon removal to South Sudan is not reduced by reason that the applicant may make a protection visa application, as such an application may be refused? In other words, should Plaintiff M1 be distinguished?

Federal Court (Full Court). One of the judges of the Full Court had appeared as the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in a conviction appeal on a point of law involving the non-citizen in question. The non-citizen's representative applied for that judge to recuse himself from hearing the appeal from an FCA decision dismissing a judicial review application.

Federal Court: The Full Court had decided in Ibrahim that the Minister had conflated Australia's non-refoulment obligations under international law with the protection obligations under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). The Minister sought to distinguish Ibrahim on the basis that, here, he had accepted the findings made by an ITOA regarding non-refoulment obligations and had considered the Appellant's claim of harm "outside of the concept of non-refoulement", thus suggesting that there had been no conflation.

Federal Court. Can it be said that s 500(6J) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) "does not apply to information which is sought from the applicant by the Tribunal of its own initiative, and, instead, it applies only in respect of information provided by the applicant in support of his case in chief"?

Federal Court. Para 13.1.1(1)(e) of Direction 79 said that decision makers, when considering whether to revoke under s 501CA(4) the mandatory cancellation of a visa, should consider the "frequency of the non-citizen’s offending". If several offences arose out of one, overall occasion of offending, can those offences be seen as frequent? Para 13.1.1(1)(d) was about "the sentence imposed by the courts for a crime or crimes". AAT said: "To an extent, the investigatory exercise required by this sub-paragraph (e) largely mirrors that required in an application of the immediately preceding sub-paragraph (d). This is because any trend of increasing seriousness of offending is usually analogous to the regime of sentencing imposed for it". Did AAT engage in double counting?

High Court (single Justice). In determining whether to grant the plaintiff a time extension to file his judicial review application, does he disclose an arguable basis for relief in arguing that the delegate made an error in treating a Code 35 NPC as not satisfying the request?

Federal Court (Full Court). Is it an element of the complementary protection criterion that the visa applicant have a subjective fear of harm? Is "a person’s subjective belief is a mandatory irrelevant consideration for the purposes of the complementary protection criteria"?

Federal Court (Full Court). Is the question whether the applicant has a reasonable explanation for refusing or failing to comply with a request made under s 91W of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) a matter for the Minister to determine? Is s 91W(3) otiose? Does the phrase “reasonable explanation” in s 91W(2) connote not only that the explanation is rational, but also that the explanation is credible?

High Court. In relation to s 501CA(4) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), can it be said that there is "no barrier to the Minister reading and understanding the representations made by an applicant by other methods including the method of relying only upon a departmental summary of them, so long as that summary is accurate and contains a full account of the essential content"?