Damanik v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs

The case of Damanik v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs involves Bernandus Damanik, an Indonesian national who has been a permanent resident of Australia since 1990. Damanik was convicted in 1998 of possession of the drug ecstasy with intent to sell or supply it, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years. Despite being eligible for parole in January 2000, the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs decided in January that Damanik should be deported. This application for review of that decision and a related decision to deny him merits review in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal raises questions of natural justice and the proper exercise of the Minister’s powers.

The legal issues that the court was required to decide in this case included whether the Minister's decision to deport Damanik was unreasonable, whether there was a breach of procedural fairness, and whether the Minister took into account irrelevant considerations. The court needed to assess whether the Minister acted unreasonably in arriving at the conclusion to deport Damanik, whether any breach of procedural fairness had occurred, and whether the Minister considered irrelevant factors in making the decision.

The court found that the ground of unreasonableness for the purposes of judicial review, involving the decision-maker acting so unreasonably in arriving at the conclusion he did, that no reasonable decision-maker could have arrived at that conclusion, was not viable. The court also concluded that there was no breach of procedural fairness, and that the Minister's consideration of the lack of a support network and the deaths of two young people at a nightclub on New Year's Eve in January 2000 were not irrelevant. The court determined that these factors were relevant to the exercise of the Minister's discretion.

The court dismissed the application with costs. The final orders were that the application is dismissed and the Applicant is to pay the Respondent’s costs of the application.