Denial Claim Procedural Fairness As The Life Saver
If the application of visa has been declined, and the declination is confirmed by the Tribunal, it may be possible to have to quash of the Tribunal decision in the Federal Circuit court. It will be sent back for re-determination to the Tribunal, in the case, if it could be shown that the applicant procedural fairness did not afford by the tribunal.
The denial claim power of procedural fairness decision was illustrated which was actually handed by the Federal Circuit Court Judge Riley that paper in the February 2017. This seems as “CCM15 & Ors v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2017) FCCA 304 (23 February 2017)”.
Details of this case:
The applicant was looking for the grounds visa protection. A politically motivated prosecution was experienced by the applicant in their home country which would be the prosecution subject if forced to return back.
The Tribunal told the applicant at the hearing that in some relevant countries, Australian Embassy has received unidentified “dob in” letter that suspected that the applicant family member was associated with a specific political group.
Anyway, the Tribunal didn’t speak that they actually had a copy of the unidentified letter before them and didn’t give unidentified letter copy to the applicant.
The Tribunal also provides the contents summarized of the unidentified letter “dob in” by speaking applicant about the letter that she and her co-applicants were having different names. It may be that the letter had set out of the name of the applicants in two varied places with spelling variations and script.
The court accomplishes that it can be understood that there was no applicants spelling set in English. So, the fact is that there was variation in the spelling of their name in English in the translated version.
As a result, the court comes to the conclusion that the Tribunal had not given the accurate summary of the unidentified letter as they had been using varied names when this was not clear that what actually the letter said. And, further the Tribunal didn’t provide the applicant's copy of the letter, the applicants had been deprived of procedural fairness and error with jurisdiction had occurred.
It was the case for written reasons for confirming the Protection visa application refusal, the Tribunal stated that it had not placed any load on the unidentified letter.
Therefore, the Minister disputed before the court that the Tribunal had not given the unidentified letter, so the Tribunal fails to accurately explain the letter contents that have not affected the outcome of the proceedings.
Anyway, the Federal circuit court mentioned that, with the High Court’s decision for “Applicant of VEAL of 2002 v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs” the compulsion to disclose the idea of “dob in” letters is not satisfied.