1921242 (Refugee)

The applicant, who had previously been in Australia, sought review of a decision concerning a protection visa. The dispute arose because the applicant had departed Australia in July 2019 and had not returned to the migration zone at the time of lodging their application for review. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) was therefore required to determine whether it had jurisdiction to hear the application.

The central legal issue was whether the applicant's application for review was validly made under section 412 of the relevant legislation, which requires an applicant to be within the migration zone at the time of making the application. The Tribunal considered the evidence that the applicant had left Australia and had not returned, finding that the applicant was not in the migration zone when the application was lodged.

Applying the statutory requirement that an applicant must be within the migration zone for the Tribunal to have jurisdiction, the Tribunal concluded that the application for review was not validly made. Consequently, the Tribunal determined that it lacked jurisdiction to consider the merits of the applicant's protection visa claim. The Tribunal made no orders as it found it had no jurisdiction to proceed.