BDQ18 v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs
[2024] FedCFamC2G 621
•26 June 2024
FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA
(DIVISION 2)
BDQ18 v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2024] FedCFamC2G 621
File number(s): BRG 609 of 2020 Judgment of: JUDGE VASTA Date of judgment: 26 June 2024 Catchwords: MIGRATION – Protection Visa – whether Administrative Appeal Tribunal decision affected by jurisdictional error – where no error established in Administrative Appeal Tribunal’s decision – application dismissed Legislation: Migration Act 1958 (Cth) Division: Division 2 General Federal Law Number of paragraphs: 73 Date of last submission/s: 24 June 2024 Date of hearing: 24 June 2024 Place: Brisbane Counsel for the Applicant: Mr Pallai, Solicitor Solicitor for the Applicant: JustDigit Lawyers & Notary Services Counsel for the First Respondent: Ms Helsdon, Solicitor Solicitor for the First Respondent: Sparke Helmore Solicitor for the Second Respondent: Submitting appearance, save as to costs ORDERS
BRG 609 of 2020 FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA (DIVISION 2)
BETWEEN: BDQ18
Applicant
AND: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP AND MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS
First Respondent
ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS TRIBUNAL
Second Respondent
ORDER MADE BY:
JUDGE VASTA
DATE OF ORDER:
26 JUNE 2024
THE COURT ORDERS THAT:
1.The application filed on 23 November 2020 as amended on 16 June 2024 is dismissed.
2.The Applicant pay the First Respondent’s costs of an incidental to the application fixed in the sum of $8,371.30.
IT IS NOTED THAT:
A.The Court will not provide a written version of the reasons for judgment delivered today, unless an appeal has been lodged or the Court has received a request in writing from either party seeking that written reasons be produced.
Note: The form of the order is subject to the entry in the Court’s records.
Note: The Court may vary or set aside a judgment or order to remedy minor typographical or grammatical errors (r 17.05(2)(g) Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Division 2) (General Federal Law) Rules 2021 (Cth)), or to record a variation to the order pursuant to r 17.05 Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Division 2) (General Federal Law) Rules 2021 (Cth).
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
(Ex Tempore)JUDGE VASTA
On 3 November 2020, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (“the Tribunal”) affirmed a decision of the delegate not to grant the Applicant, BQD18, a protection visa. On 23 November 2020, the Applicant asked this Court to review that decision.
The matter came before Registrar Carlton a few weeks after the filing. The Registrar made orders for filing and adjourned the matter to a date to be advised by the Registry for final hearing in what was then the Federal Circuit Court of Australia. The matter ended up being finally taken into the National Migration Docket, and on 5 February 2024, the Registrar amended some of those orders made by the other Registrar but did not actually make an order on that day as to where the matter would be finally heard. At some stage in either April or May, the Registry assigned the matter to me to be heard today, 26 June 2024.
That means that it has been over three and a half years since the applicant filed her application until it is at the time that the Court has been able to finally hear the matter. That is an inordinate delay, and on behalf of the Court, I apologise to BDQ18 for that delay.
Having said that, the delay has been somewhat fortunate because it eventually led to Mr Pillai being able to represent the Applicant and to put forward to the Court both an application, and submissions that were sensible and actually grappled with the issue of jurisdictional error. It seems that he has done so in a very timely manner, and the Court does thank him for the diligence with which he has acted in this matter.
The background to the matter is that the applicant is a citizen of Sri Lanka. The Applicant arrived in Australia by boat on 9 April 2013. She made an application for a protection visa on 14 July 2014. Because it was that she first stepped foot in Australia at a place that was not one of the designated arrival points, her matter would be one that was going to be the subject of merits review if the delegate did not look favourably upon the application for the protection visa.
The claims that the Applicant made were that she was of Tamil ethnicity and of the Hindu religion, that she and her family and her whole community were deeply affected by the conflict in Sri Lanka. She said that she has four siblings and her parents had been discriminated against because of their ethnicity and perceived LTTE links. The Applicant said that her father ended up being beaten so severely in 1992 to 1993 that he lost mobility and the use of one of his legs.
This meant that he was unable to financially provide for his family because of that incident. She said that, when she was four and a half years of age, her parents sent her to be raised by the sister of her paternal grandmother. She refers to that person as “grandmother”. Her aunt, that is the grandmother’s daughter, became, in effect, a surrogate mother to her.
The applicant said that her aunt had been recruited by the LTTE. She still does not have a full picture of what role or what activities the aunt undertook, but she said, because of those facts, she and the aunt needed to be very vigilant, and they often moved to different places. She claimed that she experienced many incidents of harassment and threats from men who visited the family home at various times, asking questions and making threats. She described these perpetrators as men, alone or in groups of two or three. They were unknown to her, and she thinks that they were generally unknown to her aunt.
She said that these persons would come to the house where they were living; that these people regularly told them they were from the CID or working for the CID. Sometimes they said they were from the police. Other times they purported to be private individuals, or neighbours, who wanted to ask questions. They generally wore plain clothes. Sometimes they wore army or police uniforms. They spoke in Tamil, but it was broken, or unnatural-sounding, Tamil. They often carried pistols. They attended the premises mainly during the daytime, but sometimes at night.
The questions they asked focused on the relationship between the Applicant, the aunt and any cousins: what their names were, how long they had resided there, how many people were in the house, what her aunt and uncle were doing in Colombo, and why her uncle, that is the husband of the aunt, died.
The Applicant said that they, she and the aunt, relocated many times over the period 2007 to 2013 in order to avoid problems, but every time that they went to a new area, they were soon located, and the pattern resumed. The Applicant says she was threatened in the same manner in the street.
She said that the aunt often received rude and threatening messages from unknown callers. She said that men made verbal threats, saying to the aunt that they could shoot and kill the Applicant herself, or the son, or find any of them wherever they would go.
She said that she and the aunt decided to leave Sri Lanka, and they did so in 2013. She said that the aunt attempted to protect her and didn’t tell her what was going on because she was young. And she said that her aunt was concerned that if she became too scared, she would leave her and take her back to the grandmother.
The Applicant gave examples of times where it was that they were harassed and what had occurred. She said that her aunt told her, “It’s safer for you to come with me to Australia because I’ve not told you everything that they told me.” She said that she was aware of the problems, that she has, are because of her aunt and her background and because the people harassing her, referred to her aunt and uncle. The applicant said that the aunt had believed that the perpetrators were CID, or supporters of the TMVP, including local pro-government militia that work together, and that these people could be anyone that is working for these groups.
The Applicant said that she feared that she would encounter the same problems if she returned to Sri Lanka, and she fears that she would be physically attacked, abducted, sexually assaulted, tortured and/or killed. She fears that the threats will continue because she is easily recognisable to these groups, and her name is known to them because of her association with her aunt. She said that, as an unmarried Tamil woman, she was at a greater risk because she does not have a male protector to deter potential attackers.
She said that once she and the aunt came to Australia, the aunt developed a friendship with a man whilst they were in a detention centre, and after this, the aunt began to behave strangely towards her and pretended not to know her. The aunt has not had anything to do with her since about this time and the Applicant has not been able to talk to the aunt and has no idea whether the aunt is still in Australia or not.
The Applicant said she was able to speak to the aunt’s eldest brother to get some information for her protection visa application. And she said she had been told that by the aunt’s brother that the police and the CID are still looking for the Applicant and the aunt.
In April 2014, the Applicant claims that men from the CID visited her parents’ home and asked about the Applicant’s whereabouts. A week later, her sister’s husband was questioned by the CID, and he was taken for several days. She said that her family made inquiries with the authorities to locate him. The local police suggested he was being held in Batticaloa and that the Red Cross confirmed that he was located there. The sister had been smuggling weapons, but the husband did not want to confess to that because it would result in serious punishment.
The applicant said that the family is very worried about him because he has been detained and tortured by Sri Lankan authorities in the past. She said that her biological parents would not allow her to come back and live with them if it were that she was sent back to Sri Lanka because she would cause too many problems for them.
She also made claims that she would be the subject of persecution because of her Tamil race or ethnicity, her imputed political opinion, being pro-Tamil and/or pro-LTTE, and her membership of social groups being “failed Tamil asylum seekers” or “membership of the aunt’s family”.
The Tribunal had regards to the pre-hearing submissions. I should add, at this stage, that this matter had been the subject of a previous Tribunal hearing in which the decision was affirmed, but that this Court, upon review, remitted the matter back to the Tribunal. So, this Tribunal was, in effect, the second Tribunal hearing the application for merits review from the delegates decision. The Tribunal did have regard to the pre-hearing submissions to the point where the Tribunal member reproduced the submissions in full in the reasons. The Tribunal then went thoroughly through not only those submissions, but the evidence that the Applicant gave to the Tribunal during its hearing, as well as a great deal of country information which the Tribunal also reproduced in their reasons.
The Tribunal accepted that there was a relationship between the Applicant and the person she referred to as her aunt. The Tribunal noted that what the Applicant had said in her interview with the delegate was that she was not associated with the LTTE and that neither she nor any members of her family were members of the LTTE. The Tribunal asked the Applicant if what she had said to the delegate was correct, and she confirmed this. And the Tribunal asked her how that information reconciled with the evidence that she had given about her aunt being a member of the LTTE, and the Applicant said that she thought the delegate’s questions related to blood family members only. She did not regard the aunt as a blood family member, it would seem.
The Applicant said that the LTTE had tried to recruit her because she was the eldest person in her grandmother’s house, but she cried all the time that she was there and the LTTE quickly sent her home. The Applicant said that she received numerous visits from the authorities when she was living with the aunt. The Tribunal asked whether it was 10, 50, 100 visits or more. The Applicant replied that she could not remember, and she said that this was her mindset as to why it was that she could not remember.
She said that she knew that her aunt was involved with the LTTE because the grandmother, that is the aunt’s parents, told her about it, but she could not remember when that was. She had said that she did not know what role she played and what role the aunt played in the LTTE.
The Tribunal asked her about some of the incidents that she spoke about, including one where she said that she was harassed by persons who requested that she come in for questioning and when she started crying, a bystander intervened and that the two persons took off on a motorbike.
The Tribunal asked about the arrest of the brother-in-law and the Tribunal looked at what it was that the Applicant had said to both the delegate and the first Tribunal. The Tribunal summarised this as being at paragraphs 123 onwards:
…Her brother-in-law had been arrested in 2014 and, according to the applicant, was still in detention. The delegate had also identified that the applicant’s sister was smuggling weapons. Asked to offer an opinion as to why her brother-in-law had been arrested, the applicant stated she really did not know much more. However, the Tribunal noted that the applicant had told the delegate that her family held her responsible for her brother-in-law being arrested.
124.The Tribunal was concerned by the applicant’s inability to remember events, particularly in light of the very detailed claims and evidence provided to the delegate.
125.The Representative referred the Tribunal to the submission he had made and to the confidential report provided by the Queensland Program of Assistance to Survivors or Torture and Trauma dated 14 April 2020. The Tribunal did consider the report and noted the course of counselling the applicant had undertaken from January 2016 to September 2019. The report suggested that the applicant was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and this would impact her memory.
The Tribunal then spoke to the Applicant about some of the matters that they had trouble with. The Applicant then raised a new claim that since she had been in Australia, she had met and married another man and had conceived a child and that her husband’s family were not happy with her and were threatening to kill her. The Tribunal expressed concern that such a claim had not been raised before and had not even been raised with her representative who had finalised, in effect, his instructions three days beforehand.
The Tribunal then went through the claims and spoke of the country information regarding those generalised claims for fear of persecution for her Tamil ethnicity and her gender and her political interests and her being a failed asylum seeker. Having regard to all of those matters, the Tribunal did not find that any of those matters would give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution.
Regarding her general claims about the aunt, the Tribunal noted that even though the Applicant spoke of a life of harassment, there was nothing that would specify who it was that was doing the harassing, and how this was motivated in a political way.
The Tribunal also noted that despite the many times that the aunt and the Applicant were questioned, they were never arrested, they were never detained, they were never the subject of any physical violence or torture. The Tribunal was of the view that they were not of any interest to the authorities for any reason.
Having regard to all of those matters, the Tribunal did not find that the Applicant satisfied the refugee criterion.
The Tribunal then looked at whether the Applicant had satisfied the complimentary protection criterion. The Tribunal was cognisant of country information and also the information in a psychological or psychiatric report that the Applicant had provided, as well as the report from the centre that assisted victims or trauma and torture.
Having regard to all of those matters, the Tribunal did not find that Applicant satisfied the complimentary protection criteria.
Having made those findings, the Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the Applicant a protection visa.
On 16 June 2024, an amended application was filed. It may be that, technically, this application needs leave. I granted that leave. It is, as I said at the time, always better for there to be an articulate application before the Court and as long as the Minister was able to answer that application, then there was not any prejudice to the Minister and therefore the Court did not have any prejudice associated with hearing the matter.
There are two grounds of application. The first ground is that:
1.The Tribunal made an erroneous finding of fact in that the decision was not supported by the evidence before the Tribunal. The Tribunal based the decision on the existence of a particular fact that did not actually exist. The Tribunal fell into jurisdictional error as there was either no evidence or a lack of evidence to satisfy an essential statutory element for the protection visa.
Particulars:
(a)The Applicant stated that the authorities first visited her aunt’s home and made inquiries about her. Then she claimed they went to her biological parent’s home and took her brother-in-law into custody after inquiring about the applicant. There is probative and corroborative evidence before the Tribunal regarding this claim. However, the Tribunal rejected this claim stating that her sister was smuggling weapons. There is no evidence before the delegate or Tribunal to support the claim that her sister was smuggling weapons.
The background to this ground is what the Tribunal said in paragraph 123 of their reasons, which I have already read into the record. The Applicant submits that, when one actually goes through the court book and what was said to the delegate, what was said even to the first Tribunal, and what the Applicant has put in all of her submissions and affidavits, there has never been any evidence that the sister was smuggling weapons.
The Minister has conceded that this is an erroneous finding. The Applicant’s written statement, which appears at CB 78, says this:
28.My aunt’s brother told me that the police and the CID had gone to my grandmother’s place and asked where my aunt and I had gone. In addition, in April 2014, men from the CID came to my parents’ house in [M] and asked after me. Around a week later, my sister’s husband [Name omitted] (the father of the boy I am holding in the photo that I provided with my application), was questioned by the CID and taken away several days later. My family made enquires with the authorities in order to locate him. The local police suggest that he was being held in Batticaloa and the Red Cross recently confirmed that he had been located there. My sister was able to visit him in jail. The authorities are pressuring him to confess to smuggling weapons, but he does not want to confess to that because it will result in serious punishment. My family is very worried about him, especially because he has been detained and tortured by Sri Lankan authorities in the past.
When the applicant was interviewed by the delegate, she gave evidence to the effect that her brother-in-law was taken by the authorities and, that for him to be released, the Applicant would have to return to Sri Lanka, or the brother-in-law would have to admit that he was bringing in weapons or smuggling weapons. The delegate’s decision noted that the applicant’s written statement noted her sister was smuggling weapons, but her brother-in-law does not want to confess to that because it will result in serious punishment. It seems that this is where the error originated.
The Minister concedes that the delegate misconstrued or misapprehended the claim. The written statement of the Applicant and her evidence to the delegate, and even in her other statements, did not ever state that her sister was smuggling weapons. This mistaken fact seemed to carry through even to the first hearing. The second Tribunal said this, as I’ve already noted: “that when talking about this arrest, that the delegate had also identified that the Applicant’s sister was smuggling weapons”. That is an error. The error is not that the delegate had also identified that the Applicant’s sister was smuggling weapons.
The error is that the delegate had no basis for saying that the Applicant’s statement had said anything to the effect that the sister was smuggling weapons. Nevertheless, that being an error, the question here is whether this has tainted or in any way been something that has affected the conclusion that the Tribunal has made. What the Tribunal said at paragraphs 175 and 176 is this,
175.There was no evidence that her brother-in-law who has disappeared was connected to the LTTE, or that his disappearance was so linked or linked to her. The Tribunal notes the evidence that his wife (the applicant’s sister) was involved in trading weapons. The Tribunal is not satisfied that this brother-in-law’s disappearance has in the past, or will in the future, cause the Sri Lankan authorities to view the applicant with suspicion.
176.The Tribunal finds that even if the applicant’s brother-in-law was connected to the LTTE, the Sri Lankan authorities have not viewed the applicant’s other family members as persons of adverse interest as a result of their affiliation with that brother-in-law. Taking into account their continued residence in Sri Lanka, with no known adverse consequences, the Tribunal finds there is no real chance of the Sri Lankan authorities targeting her due to any connection she may have with the brother-in-law.
The Applicant nevertheless contends that the error, that is, even just noting that the sister had smuggled drugs, has irretrievably tainted and infected the reasoning of the Tribunal. The Applicant struggled to explain why this is so. If it is that the Applicant’s claim is one that relates to the Applicant herself, it seems difficult to understand why it is that the issue of whether the sister, or more properly, “the brother-in-law’s wife” smuggling weapons, has any relevance to the matter at all.
In effect, the claim is from the Applicant that:
After I arrived in Australia, my brother-in-law was arrested. He was arrested and was told to confess to weapon smuggling. He is not guilty of that, but he will not be released until he either admits to weapon smuggling or I return to Sri Lanka. Having regard to this circumstance, I am fearful that I will be targeted by the authorities if it is that I return to Sri Lanka. My family blame me for my brother-in-law’s arrest.
If that is the claim (and this was admitted by the representative of the Applicant to be the claim), then whether the Applicant’s sister, “the wife of the brother-in-law”, is actually selling weapons is of no import to the claim. The claim is not in any way altered, or given more credence, or given less credence, if the sister is selling weapons. It is an irrelevancy and is not material to the claim.
Whilst the notation by the Tribunal may be a notation of a factual error, that error does not become jurisdictional unless it is something that actually affects the claim.
The Tribunal looked at the claim and rejected it, because it did not consider that the Applicant had any ties at all to the LTTE, or was imputed with having ties to the LTTE, and therefore the arrest of the brother-in-law had nothing to do with the Applicant. Having regard to that finding, it would seem to me whether the sister was smuggling weapons had nothing to do with the merits of the claim or the Tribunal’s ultimate disposition of that claim.
For those reasons, ground 1 fails.
Ground 2 was that,
2.The Tribunal made a jurisdictional error by reaching a legally unreasonable conclusion. The reasoning process was illogical and irrational. Furthermore, the jurisdictional fact necessary for its exercise did not exist as the purported state of mind was based on illogicality or irrationality in the process of fact-finding and the tribunal’s reasoning. The findings were unreasonable in a legal sense.
In the particulars, there were four instances given. I will deal with each of them seriatim.
The first example given of irrational processes was the claim that was made in ground 1 - that with regard to the claim that the Applicant was responsible for the detention of the brother-in-law, and that the brother-in-law would be released if the Applicant returned to Sri Lanka, the Applicant has submitted, “the Tribunal rejected this claim by stating that her sister was smuggling weapons”.
This is an incorrect statement of why it was that the Tribunal rejected the claim. The claim was rejected because the Tribunal did not accept that the Applicant had ties to the LTTE, or that she would be imputed with ties to the LTTE, and therefore the arrest of the brother-in-law had nothing to do with her. Because that was the reasoning behind the rejection of that claim, the premise upon which this aspect of ground 2 is based does not exist. Therefore, it need not be considered any further.
The second aspect was said to be this,
The applicant mentioned that she sometimes commuted by bus and sometimes was taken by [name omitted] on a bike. However, regardless of the mode of transportation on the incident in question, the applicant claimed they returned by bike. The applicant informed the tribunal she had memory issues. The tribunal had evidence from Dr. Dilprasan De Silva, a Consultant Psychiatrist, stating that “her illness will impair her memory and ability to recall events.” The tribunal did not consider the applicant’s memory issues.
The Tribunal, as I have already mentioned when I read into the record those paragraphs at 125 and 126 of the Reasons, was cognisant of the fact that the report said that the Applicant had memory issues and the Tribunal did not in any way dispute, or call into question, that report.
The Tribunal spoke of, instead, the inconsistencies that occurred. There were times where the Applicant said that she was accosted on a bus by persons and that upon alighting from the bus she was further accosted and that other persons came to her aid and that the accosters decamped on a motorbike. This mode of escape did not seem logical if it were that they had been travelling on a bus.
The Applicant was asked about these matters and said that she could not remember. What is important here is that the Tribunal has not said that the Applicant had manufactured the tales, or that the lack of memory was a reason for the Tribunal not to accept the evidence. Rather, what the Tribunal has said is that, in what the Applicant had said earlier, either in interview or in her statement, was inconsistent, and that the Tribunal, in putting to the Applicant that inconsistency, was not assisted further by the Applicant because she simply could not recall matters.
The Tribunal was left then in a state of res ipsa loquitur and so therefore had to look at what it was that was actually before it. Given that the onus to satisfy the Tribunal was on the applicant, on many of the matters claimed, the applicant simply could not satisfy the Tribunal.
Now, that is not a criticism of the Applicant, and the Tribunal acknowledged that the report did say that she had issues with memory loss, but the inconsistency that was there, on the face of what it was that she had claimed, did not get any better and the fact that the Applicant did have issues now with memory does not in any way plug up or fill the void that the inconsistency in what the Applicant had said had made.
It seems to me that this aspect of the illogicality does not have merit.
The third aspect of illogicality was that:
The tribunal stated that all the applicant’s claims of threats, assaults, stalking, attempted sexual assaults, and associated incidents may be random individual acts. Based on the evidence, the perpetrators are paramilitary connected with the CID, police, and army. This is not a random act, and the threatening phone calls are not speculative. There is evidence before the tribunal.
It seems to me that this characterisation, by the Applicant, is quite a stretch. The paragraph in question, which is paragraph 135, reads as follows:
The applicant has claims, notably included in paragraph 42, of incidents of men knocking on her door and claims about men staring at her in the street. The tribunal notes those claims are not specific as to the genesis of such complaints. The tribunal is satisfied that such incidents may be random acts of individuals and, as the applicant admits, some were not followed through to indeed determine the identity of the person abusing her or them, or the reason therefore. Similarly, with phone calls, the applicant admits that the phones rang but they were not always answered, therefore it is speculation as to whom the callers may have been.
Given the evidence that was before the Tribunal, such a conclusion was open for the Tribunal to make. The fact that a phone rings, is not evidence that the person on the other end of the line is a member of the CID or of the other groups that the Applicant claims were harassing her and the aunt. As had been spoken of earlier in my recitation of the reasons of the Tribunal, there was no linking factor to any of these harassments other than they were committed by males. There is nothing that showed that this was, as it were, an orchestrated pattern of behaviour by any of those groups that the applicant identified as wishing to harass her.
It may be that another Tribunal of fact may have inferred that there was a pattern, but that is all it could be: at most an inference, and more likely it is speculation. The conclusions made by the Tribunal in paragraph 135 were certainly open to the Tribunal.
That means that this aspect of illogicality cannot be made out because for it to be made out, the conclusions simply cannot be open. As they were open, there is therefore no merit to this aspect.
The fourth aspect is that,
The Tribunal’s conclusion at paragraph 209 stated that considering the applicant’s individual circumstances, both individually and cumulatively, along with the country information, the Tribunal finds that there are not substantial grounds for believing that as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of the applicant being removed from Australia to Iraq, she will face a real risk of significant harm. Claims accepted for Refugee Convention purposes were not considered for the purpose of s36(2)(aa), making the conclusion illogical and irrational and legally unreasonable.
Firstly, there is obviously a typographical error in that the Tribunal has spoken of the country being Iraq rather than Sri Lanka, but it is obvious that that is typographical as there is constant references to the Applicant coming from Sri Lanka.
The second aspect is that if one looks at what the Tribunal has said, the Tribunal has gone through all of the cumulative claims of the Applicant, at paragraph 193, and then comes to the conclusion that the Applicant does not satisfy the refugee criteria.
The Tribunal then asked itself the question “are there substantial grounds for believing that as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of the Applicant being removed from Australia, that there is a real risk that she will suffer significant harm?” And the Tribunal then goes through all of those aspects, that are relevant, that have already been raised and also adds the medical report that the Tribunal had been given. The Tribunal refers to quite a deal of country information and has quite thoroughly assessed the question of complementary protection.
The reasons of the Tribunal have to be read as a whole and not as segmented parts that have no relation to each other. There has been a logic in the way in which the Tribunal has assessed the claims and a logic in speaking of the complementary protection matters after it is that they have dealt with all of the refugee claims. It is disingenuous to say that, in not repeating everything that had been said in regards to the refugee matters, this could also impact upon the complementary protection criteria, therefore the Tribunal has not considered those matters.
On a reading of these Reasons, one can see that the Tribunal has been thorough and meticulous in ensuring that everything, that could have been looked at, had been looked at. This aspect of the ground also is therefore without merit.
Having regard to all of those aspects, it seems to me then that ground 2, in that it suggests that the findings of the Tribunal are illogical, irrational or unreasonable, must therefore fail.
The Court has looked very thoroughly at the Reasons and apart from the matters that the Applicant has raised, has also tried to ensure that, on its reading, the Court cannot see that there has been any other form of jurisdictional error made.
Having gone through those matters, especially grounds 1 and 2, I cannot find that there has been any infection of jurisdictional error into the reasoning of the Tribunal.
Therefore, I dismiss the application and order costs fixed in the sum of $8371.30.
I certify that the preceding seventy-three (73) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment of Judge Vasta. Associate:
Dated: 24 July 2024
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