Le v Minister for Immigration

This matter concerned an application for judicial review of a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (the Tribunal) which affirmed a decision not to grant the applicant a Partner (Migrant) (Class BC) subclass visa. The applicant contended that the Tribunal failed to comply with section 359A of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth) during its review process.

The central legal issue before the court was whether certain statements within a statutory declaration constituted "information" that the Tribunal considered would be the reason, or part of the reason, for affirming the decision to refuse the visa, as contemplated by section 359A. This required the court to determine the proper interpretation of "information" in the context of the Tribunal's obligations under the Act.

The court reasoned that the statutory criterion under section 359A does not depend on the Tribunal's internal reasoning process or its published reasons. Instead, the "reason for affirming the decision" is determined by the substantive criteria for making that decision, which in this case related to the applicant's eligibility for a protection visa under section 36(1) of the Act. The court found that the statements in the statutory declaration did not, in themselves, reject, deny, or undermine the applicant's claims to protection. If believed, such statements would have been a step towards rejecting, rather than affirming, the decision under review. Therefore, the court concluded that the statements did not constitute the relevant "information" for the purposes of section 359A.

The court found no jurisdictional error and dismissed the application for judicial review.