Hillman (Migration)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered the case of the applicant, a British citizen who had previously held various temporary visas in Australia, including a Business Owner Subclass 160 visa. The applicant, along with his spouse, applied for a Subclass 892 (State/Territory Sponsored Business Owner) visa while onshore. The applicant was a 51% shareholder in an Australian corporation, Red Dragon AU Pty Ltd, which operated a micro-brewery business. The application asserted significant personal and business assets, exceeding the required thresholds for the visa.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the applicants had met all the essential requirements for the Business Skills (Residence) (Class DF) visa, specifically Subclass 892. This included the requirement to provide Business Activity Statement (BAS) information for a specified period. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection had requested BAS statements for the periods from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2015, and an integrated client account from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 January 2016.

The Tribunal found that the BAS statements for the periods from April 2013 to June 2014 were lodged on 10 April 2015, and for the period from July 2014 to March 2015 were lodged on 17 April 2015. Crucially, the integrated client account and tax agent portal information from the ATO, which included these lodgement activities, was only downloaded and printed on 4 May 2016. There was no evidence that these documents were produced from the ATO Portal before this date, which was significantly after the lodgement of the visa application and the requested periods. As this constituted a failure to meet an essential requirement for the visa, the Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the visa.