1509141 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered an application for a protection visa made by individuals from Bangladesh. The central dispute concerned whether the applicants met the criteria for a protection visa, with a subsidiary question regarding family membership if one applicant qualified.

A preliminary legal issue before the Tribunal was the validity of certificates issued under section 438 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) that purported to restrict the disclosure of certain Departmental documents. Specifically, the Tribunal examined certificates relating to email correspondence concerning another individual and copies of outgoing passenger cards completed by the applicants.

The Tribunal determined that the certificates were not valid. It applied the principles from *MZAFZ v MIBP* [2016] FCA 1081, holding that citing "internal working documents" or "business affairs" as the sole grounds for non-disclosure was insufficient to establish public interest immunity. The Tribunal found that the email correspondence was erroneously placed on the file and unrelated to the application, while the passenger cards did not present a valid basis for non-disclosure under the public interest immunity test. The Tribunal concluded that the decision under review should be affirmed.