Anam v Minister for Immigration

The applicant, Anam, sought judicial review of a decision by the Migration Review Tribunal (Tribunal) to affirm the refusal of her student visa application. The Minister for Immigration was the respondent. The core of the dispute concerned allegations that the Tribunal's decision was affected by jurisdictional error due to allegedly incorrect factual findings made by the Tribunal.

The primary legal issue before the Court was whether the Tribunal's factual findings were so demonstrably incorrect as to constitute a jurisdictional error, thereby vitiating its decision. This required the Court to consider the standard of review applicable to factual findings made by the Tribunal in the context of a migration decision.

Justice Cameron reasoned that for a factual finding to amount to jurisdictional error, it must be more than merely incorrect; it must be a finding that no reasonable tribunal, acting on the evidence before it, could have made. The Court found that the applicant had not demonstrated that the Tribunal's findings were incapable of being made by a reasonable tribunal. Therefore, the applicant failed to establish jurisdictional error on this ground.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.