1802120 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered an application for review of a decision to refuse a protection visa. The applicant, who is from China, did not appear at the scheduled hearing for their review application, which led to the dismissal of that application. Subsequently, the applicant sought to have the dismissal reinstated.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether it was appropriate to reinstate the dismissed review application, given the applicant's failure to attend the original hearing. This required the Tribunal to consider whether the applicant had taken all reasonable steps to be notified of the hearing and whether their reasons for non-attendance constituted sufficient grounds for reinstatement.

The Tribunal found that all reasonable steps had been taken to notify the applicant of the hearing. The applicant's stated reasons for not attending – fear of opening hearing notice emails and nervousness about answering phone calls – were not considered by the Tribunal to be sufficient to warrant reinstatement. Consequently, the Tribunal confirmed the original decision to dismiss the review application.