Acy16 v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs

This matter came before Judge Humphreys of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia concerning an application for judicial review. The applicant sought to challenge a decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), with the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs as the respondent. The core of the dispute revolved around allegations of a denial of procedural fairness and jurisdictional error, stemming from the AAT's alleged failure to disclose the existence of a certificate pursuant to section 438 of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth).

The court was required to determine whether the failure to disclose the section 438 certificate amounted to a denial of procedural fairness and, consequently, jurisdictional error. A further issue arose concerning the AAT's use of a website to compare a signature on a document presented by the applicant with a sample signature of the President of Sri Lanka, and whether this constituted a breach of section 424A of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth).

Judge Humphreys found that no jurisdictional error had been made out. The court reasoned that the applicant was aware of the interview and a summary of it by the delegate, and the mere non-disclosure of the certificate did not, in itself, establish "practical injustice" as section 424A of the Act was not engaged by the Record of Interview. Regarding the signature issue, the court noted that the applicant had affirmed the genuineness of the document and that the Tribunal had not made a concluded finding on the signature's authenticity, nor was it information that the Tribunal considered would be the reason, or part of the reason, for affirming the decision.

The application was dismissed. The applicant was ordered to pay the First Respondent's costs, fixed at $9,000.00.