Chalker and Registrar of the Australian Business Register

This matter concerned an application by Mr Chalker to review a decision by the Registrar of the Australian Business Register (the Registrar) to cancel the Australian Business Number (ABN) of G00r Pty Ltd. Mr Chalker was the sole director and shareholder of G00r Pty Ltd, which had its GST registration cancelled in 2017 and was subsequently deregistered by ASIC in November 2018. The ABN cancellation decision by the Registrar was made on 23 November 2020, after the company had ceased to exist. Mr Chalker contended that the Registrar failed to provide proper written notice of the cancellation, as required by section 18 of the ABN Act, and that this failure impacted his affairs.

The primary legal issues before Deputy President Bernard J McCabe were whether the decision to cancel the ABN was reviewable and whether Mr Chalker had the standing to bring the application on behalf of the deregistered company. The Registrar argued that the obligation to notify the company was otiose given its deregistration, and that Mr Chalker, as a director of a non-existent company, had no standing. Mr Chalker asserted that he had provided an updated email address and that the notice was not sent to it, constituting a breach of the law.

The Deputy President reasoned that an applicant must be entitled to object to a decision to seek review in the Tribunal. He found that Mr Chalker was not the holder of the ABN, and therefore did not have the entitlement to object to the cancellation decision. Consequently, Mr Chalker lacked the standing to bring an application for review. The Deputy President noted that while Mr Chalker may have attempted to object, he was rebuffed, and the proper course would have been to seek a review of that rebuff at the time. The Tribunal was therefore without jurisdiction to entertain the application.

The application for review was dismissed pursuant to s 42A(4) of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975.