2018145 (Refugee)

This matter concerned an application for review of a delegate of the Minister for Home Affairs' decision to refuse the applicant, a citizen of China, a protection visa. The applicant arrived in Australia in July 2017 and applied for the visa in September 2017. The applicant claimed to fear harm from suppliers of defective products to his business, alleging they had gang connections, had stalked him, and sent him anonymous threatening letters after he decided to stop purchasing their goods.

The legal issues before the court were whether the applicant was a person in respect of whom Australia had protection obligations under either the refugee criterion or the complementary protection criterion. This required determining if the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, and if there was a real chance of persecution in China. The court also considered whether effective protection measures were available to the applicant in China.

The court found the applicant's evidence to be vague, speculative, inconsistent, and at times implausible. The applicant's explanations for how the suppliers knew he had evidence against them, and how he knew the anonymous letter came from them, were considered self-serving and speculative. The court noted that the applicant had not reported the suppliers to the authorities and that his claim of harming their interests by ceasing to be their "biggest customer" was a new assertion. The court applied the principles that an applicant must satisfy the statutory elements of their claim and that the decision-maker is not required to accept all allegations uncritically.

The Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicant a protection visa, finding that the applicant did not satisfy the criterion in s.36(2) of the Migration Act 1958.