1500531 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered the protection visa applications of a married couple who arrived in Australia in March 2014. The dispute concerned whether the applicants met the criteria for the grant of a protection visa, as outlined in section 36 of the Migration Act 1994 and Schedule 2 of the Migration Regulations 1994.

The primary legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the applicants qualified as refugees under Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, or alternatively, whether they met the complementary protection criterion under section 36(2)(aa) of the Act. This latter criterion requires the Minister to be satisfied that there are substantial grounds for believing that, as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of removal from Australia, the applicant would suffer significant harm. The Tribunal was also required to consider relevant policy guidelines and country information assessments.

The Tribunal reasoned that the applicants had not established that they were persons in respect of whom Australia had protection obligations under either the refugee criterion or the complementary protection criterion. Consequently, they did not satisfy the requirements of section 36(2)(a) or (aa). As the other criteria for a protection visa, set out in section 36(2)(b) and (c), are dependent on satisfying one of the primary criteria, the applicants could not meet these either.

The Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicants protection visas.