MZYLL v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

[2012] HCASL 99

MZYLL

v

MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR

[2012] HCASL 99
M15/2012

1. The applicant is a citizen of Malaysia.  He came to Australia in June 2010 and subsequently applied for a protection visa.  The applicant claimed to have suffered discrimination in Malaysia because he is Chinese.  A delegate of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship refused the application on 26 October 2010. 

2. The applicant sought a review of the delegate's decision before the Refugee Review Tribunal ("the Tribunal").  The Tribunal wrote to the applicant, inviting him to attend a hearing.  He failed to do so.  The Tribunal found that the applicant's claims were lacking in detail.  The claims included that ethnic Chinese do not have equal access to university education in Malaysia, that the applicant had been jailed (or nearly jailed) because he had cooked pork when working as a chef, and that his family home had been burgled when he was 10 years old.  More generally he claimed to fear harm from local Malays and he believed that the Malaysian authorities would not protect him.  

3. The Tribunal did not accept that the applicant had suffered Convention‑related persecution in Malaysia in the past.  Nor did it accept that he would face a real chance of suffering such harm in the reasonably foreseeable future were he to return to Malaysia.  It affirmed the delegate's decision. 

4. An application for judicial review was dismissed by the Federal Magistrates Court (F Turner FM). 

5. An appeal to the Federal Court of Australia (Bromberg J) was dismissed. 

6. The applicant seeks special leave to appeal from the orders of the Federal Court.  He makes an unparticularised assertion of jurisdictional error on the part of the Tribunal and complains that the Tribunal failed to notify him of the hearing.  Federal Magistrate Turner found that the applicant had been notified of the hearing in accordance with the requirements of the statutory scheme.  No challenge to that conclusion was advanced in the Federal Court.  Bromberg J dismissed an unparticularised assertion that the Tribunal had committed jurisdictional error.  Nothing in the applicant's written case engages with his Honour's reasons in this respect.  If special leave to appeal were granted the appeal would have no prospects of success.

7. The application is dismissed.

8. Pursuant to r 41.10.5 we direct the Registrar to draw up, sign and seal an order dismissing the application.

J.D. Heydon
20 June 2012 V.M. Bell