Dju20 v Minister for Immigration

The applicant, Dju20, sought judicial review of a decision by the Independent Assessment Authority (IAA) which affirmed a delegate's refusal to grant a Safe Haven Enterprise visa. The core of the dispute concerned whether the Secretary of the Department of Immigration had provided the IAA with a statutory declaration made by the applicant as part of a previous, invalid visa application, and whether the Secretary had considered its relevance to the IAA's review. Dju20 argued that the Secretary's failure to consider the relevance of this statutory declaration breached section 473CB(1)(c) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth), thereby invalidating the IAA's jurisdiction.

The legal issues before the court were whether the Secretary had provided the statutory declaration to the IAA, whether the Secretary had considered its relevance to the IAA's review, and if not, whether this failure constituted a breach of section 473CB(1)(c) of the *Migration Act*. The court was also required to determine if the IAA's jurisdiction was strictly conditioned on the Secretary's compliance with this provision, and whether the inclusion of the statutory declaration could have altered the outcome of the IAA's review. Finally, the court considered whether, assuming the Secretary had considered the declaration's relevance, it was reasonably open to conclude it was not relevant.

The court reasoned that the evidence did not establish that the Secretary had provided the specific statutory declaration from the previous application to the IAA. Furthermore, the court found that even if the declaration had been provided, it was reasonably open to the Secretary to consider it irrelevant to the IAA's review of the delegate's decision. This was because the delegate's decision had focused on the credibility of the applicant's claims regarding detention and torture, and the earlier statutory declaration was largely identical to the one considered in the current application. The court concluded that the Secretary's actions did not prevent the IAA from exercising its jurisdiction, nor did they render the IAA's decision invalid.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.