Eqo17 v Minister for Immigration

Eqo17 (the applicant) sought judicial review of a decision by the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA) to refuse their application for a protection visa. The Minister for Immigration (the respondent) had previously issued a show cause notice to the applicant, to which the applicant responded. However, the IAA subsequently made an interlocutory decision to dismiss the applicant's show cause response without further consideration, leading to the refusal of the protection visa. The applicant then commenced proceedings in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia seeking to challenge the IAA's decision.

The central legal issue before Judge Driver was whether the IAA's interlocutory dismissal of the applicant's show cause response constituted a jurisdictional error. The applicant contended that the IAA had failed to afford them procedural fairness by not properly considering their response before dismissing it, thereby exceeding its jurisdiction. The respondent argued that the IAA's decision was within its powers and that no jurisdictional error had occurred.

Judge Driver reasoned that the IAA's statutory obligations included considering the applicant's response to the show cause notice. The Court found that the IAA's decision to dismiss the response without substantive consideration, based on an assessment that it did not raise any new issues, amounted to a failure to exercise its jurisdiction according to law. This failure to engage with the applicant's material, which was submitted in response to the show cause notice, was held to be a jurisdictional error.

Consequently, Judge Driver ordered that the IAA's decision to dismiss the applicant's show cause response be set aside. The matter was remitted to the IAA for reconsideration according to law.