Minister for Home Affairs v DUA16 & Anor; Minister for Home Affairs v CHK16 & Anor

These proceedings before the High Court of Australia concerned applications for special leave to appeal from decisions of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The applicants, the Minister for Home Affairs and the Immigration Assessment Authority, sought to appeal decisions concerning the impact of third-party fraud on administrative decision-making processes, specifically within the context of visa applications. The respondents were the visa applicants whose cases were affected by the alleged fraud.

The central legal issue before the High Court was the proper characterisation and effect of fraud in an administrative law context, particularly when it relates to submissions made to a decision-maker. The applicants argued that the Full Court's majority had erred in finding that the fraud in question, perpetrated by the respondents' agent, had sufficiently undermined or stultified the administrative review process to warrant setting aside the decisions. This raised questions about the scope of the principle that "fraud unravels everything" and how it applies when fraud does not directly prevent a statutory hearing but rather affects the material considered by the decision-maker.

The applicants contended that the approach of Justice Griffiths in the Full Court, which focused on whether the fraud had disabled or subverted a specific, imperative statutory function, was the correct one. They argued that the majority's broader approach, which considered whether the fraud had a distorting effect on the decision-maker's approach or the outcome, potentially overstated the impact of the fraud. The applicants submitted that the fraudulent conduct in this case, which resulted in misleading submissions, was akin to a "really bad job" by an agent and did not fundamentally prevent the Immigration Assessment Authority from performing its statutory function, unlike the more egregious fraud in *SZFDE*.

The respondents, conversely, argued that the majority of the Full Court correctly found that the fraud did both undermine the process and have a material impact. They contended that the Immigration Assessment Authority was misled into conducting its review on the basis that the respondents had nothing further to say, thereby distorting the only opportunity to persuade the Authority. The respondents submitted that the questions raised by the applicants concerning materiality and the role of submissions were not suitable for special leave and that the Full Court's reasoning, which found a subversion of the Authority's task, was correct.