El Hejjar v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs

The case of El Hejjar v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs involves the appellant challenging a decision made by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs regarding their visa application. The Federal Court was tasked with reviewing the decision made by the Minister, who had declined the appellant's application for a visa based on the belief that the appellant's prosecution in their home country was not related to a Convention reason. The appellant argued that the decision-maker failed to properly consider relevant material, and that this failure constituted an error of law.

The primary legal issue the court had to address was whether the Tribunal was obligated to explain why it rejected apparently probative material when making its decision. The court noted that the obligation to provide such an explanation had been previously discussed in Singh v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, but had not been definitively resolved. The court found that in this case, the Report in question was not probative material relevant to the issue of whether an inference should be drawn that the motive for the prosecution of the appellant was Convention related. Therefore, the court concluded that the decision-maker was not required to explain why the Report was rejected.

The court ultimately found no error in the decision-maker's treatment of the appellant's claim under par 430(1)(b) and dismissed the appeal. The court did not need to determine the correctness of the view taken in Singh, as it found that in this case, the Report was not relevant to the issue at hand. The court ordered that the appeal be dismissed with costs, and that the appellant pay the respondent's costs of the appeal.