BIX18 v Minister for Immigration

The applicant, BIX18, sought judicial review of a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) concerning the refusal of protection visas. The dispute arose because the AAT found the applications lodged by the principal applicants to be out of time, but accepted the review application by a child applicant. The child's claims were dependent on those of the adult applicants, which had not been separately considered by the Tribunal.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the AAT had misconstrued regulation 2.08 of the *Migration Regulations 1994* (Cth) in its assessment of the time limits for lodging the review applications. The Court was also required to determine whether any error made by the Tribunal in relation to its jurisdiction had the effect of wholly invalidating its decision.

Justice Driver held that the AAT had indeed made a jurisdictional error by misconstruing regulation 2.08. This error meant that the Tribunal had proceeded to consider the merits of the child applicant's claims without having validly accepted jurisdiction over the principal applicants' claims, upon which the child's claims were contingent. The Court found that this error was fundamental and vitiated the entire decision of the Tribunal.

The Court ordered that the decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal be quashed.