1730080 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered an application for review of a protection visa refusal by applicants from China. The central dispute concerned whether the AAT had jurisdiction to hear the application, given its timing.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the application for review had been lodged within the prescribed time limit. This required the Tribunal to determine the date on which the applicants were deemed to have been notified of the original decision, as this date would trigger the commencement of the time period for lodging an appeal.

The Tribunal applied section 494C of the relevant Act, which deems notification to have occurred in November 2017. Consequently, the prescribed period for lodging an application for review expired in 2017. As the application was received by the Tribunal on the day following the expiry of this period, it was not made in accordance with the legislative requirements.

The Tribunal concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to consider the merits of the application due to the failure to lodge it within the statutory timeframe.