Bhatta (Migration)

The applicant, Mr. Bhatta, sought judicial review of a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) that affirmed the refusal of his application for a Subclass 485 (Temporary Graduate) visa. The refusal was based on the applicant failing to satisfy the character requirements of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). The AAT had relied on information from an Australian Federal Police (AFP) National Police Certificate which indicated no disclosable court outcomes.

The central legal issue before the Federal Court was whether the AAT had made a jurisdictional error by failing to afford the applicant procedural fairness. Specifically, the Court had to determine if the AAT was entitled to make a decision adverse to the applicant based on the AFP certificate, without further inquiry or providing the applicant an opportunity to respond to any potential adverse inferences that might be drawn from the absence of disclosable court outcomes.

Justice Dougall found that the AAT had erred in law. The Court reasoned that while an AFP National Police Certificate stating "no disclosable court outcomes" is a relevant piece of evidence, it does not, in itself, necessarily mean that an applicant satisfies the character requirements. The AAT had a duty to conduct its own assessment of the applicant's character, which may have involved considering other information or affording the applicant an opportunity to explain the absence of any recorded outcomes. The Tribunal's reliance solely on the certificate, without further investigation or procedural fairness, constituted a jurisdictional error.

Consequently, the Court ordered that the AAT's decision be set aside and remitted to the AAT for redetermination according to law.