CMHV and Director-General of Security and Minister for Foreign Affairs

This matter concerned an appeal by CMHV against an adverse security assessment made by the Director-General of Security, which led to the Minister for Foreign Affairs cancelling CMHV's passport and ordering the surrender of his foreign travel documents. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) was required to conduct a de novo review of the Director-General's decision, considering all relevant evidentiary material and ensuring procedural fairness.

The primary legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the adverse security assessment was justified and, consequently, whether the Minister's decisions to cancel CMHV's passport and order the surrender of foreign travel documents were the correct and preferable ones to be made. This involved determining whether there were reasonable grounds to suspect that CMHV would be likely to engage in conduct that might prejudice the security of Australia or a foreign country, a prerequisite for the prescribed administrative actions.

The Tribunal emphasised that its review was a fresh assessment of the evidence, independent of the Director-General's original decision-making process. It applied the principle that the Tribunal must satisfy itself whether the decision was objectively the right one based on the material before it, rather than merely reviewing the correctness of the original decision-maker's assessment. The Tribunal acknowledged the difficulty in cases involving closed evidence, requiring careful assessment of all material to discern patterns that could support a reasonable suspicion of conduct prejudicial to security. The Tribunal affirmed the adverse security assessment and the Minister's decisions.