Nawaz (Migration)

[2022] AATA 3879

Nawaz (Migration) [2022] AATA 3879 (20 July 2022)

DECISION RECORD

DIVISION:  Migration & Refugee Division

APPLICANT:  Mr Shaik Nawaz

REPRESENTATIVE:  Mr Mohammed Ismail Saud (MARN: 1909826)

CASE NUMBER:  2205612

HOME AFFAIRS REFERENCE(S):           BCC2022/789909

MEMBER:  Michael Bradford

DATE AND TIME OF

ORAL DECISION AND REASONS:          20 July 2022 at 10:45 am (NSW time)

DATE OF WRITTEN RECORD:                28 October 2022

PLACE OF DECISION:  Sydney

DECISION:  The Tribunal affirms the decision under review.

CATCHWORDS

MIGRATION – cancellation – Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visas – Subclass 500 (Student) – enrolment in a registered course – gap in studies – bogus document – course certificate – college suspended and prohibited from issuing certificates – recognition of prior learning – limited course progress – decision under review affirmed    

LEGISLATION

National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011
Migration Act 1958, ss 5, 103, 107, 109
Migration Regulations 1994, r 2.41

APPLICATION FOR REVIEW

Introduction

1. This is an application for review of a decision made by a delegate of the Minister for Home Affairs to cancel the applicant’s Subclass 500 Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visa under Sec 109 of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act).

1. At the conclusion of the hearing on 20 July 2022, the Tribunal made an oral decision to affirm the delegate’s decision and informed the applicant that written reasons would be provided later.

1. On 21 July 2022, and again on 2 August 2022, the applicant’s agent, Mr Mohammed Saud, requested the Tribunal to provide written reasons for its decision.

1. What follows are my reasons for that decision.

Relevant statutory provisions, the issues in the review and executive summary

1. The visa in this case was granted to the applicant on 3 November 2020 on an application which he had lodged with the Department on 5 May 2020.

1. On 13 April 2022, after the delegate had obtained information from apparently reliable sources, and after the applicant had responded to it, his visa was cancelled for non- compliance with Sec 103 of the Act arising from the provision by the applicant of a Certificate of Completion relating to a Diploma of Business said to have been issued to him on 11 March 2020 by the Institute of Advancing Careers (IAC).

1. As will be seen, the Certificate was provided to the Department on or about 3 August 2020 in response to a request for him to explain a gap in his studies during the period from 30 June 2019 to 17 February 2020.

1. Sec 109(1) of the Act allows the Minister to cancel a visa if the visa holder has failed to comply with Sec 103. Broadly speaking this section requires a non-citizen not to provide a bogus document in support of a visa application. Relevantly, and in this case importantly, a bogus document is defined in Sec 5 of the Act to be a document that the Minister reasonably suspects to be counterfeit or altered by a person who has no authority to do so or was obtained because of a false or misleading statement, whether made knowingly or not.

1. The exercise of the cancellation power under Sec 109 is conditional on the Minister issuing a valid notice to the applicant under Sec 107 of the Act. A valid notice must contain particulars of the alleged non-compliance. Where a notice is issued that does not meet this requirement the power to cancel a visa does not arise.

1. In this case there is no issue that the second notice which the Delegate issued under Sec 107, the one dated 28 March 2022, complied with the statutory requirements and was a valid notice. The earlier notice, the one dated 10 March 2022, was defective in that it allowed the applicant insufficient time to respond to it but, even if this one was not validly issued for that reason, nothing turns of it because the second notice cured the defect. Certainly, there has been no submission in the review to the contrary.

1. The applicant has at all stages denied that the Department was entitled to cancel the visa for non-compliance with Sec 103. He has maintained the position, both before the

Department and in the Tribunal, that the Certificate which he provided to the Department in support of his visa application was a genuine document and, to this end, he has provided, both to the Department and to the Tribunal, evidence in the form of other documents and records which, he says, establishes that it is.

1. Thus, the two issues which arise for determination on this review are, firstly, whether there was non-compliance in the way described in the second notice (the NOICC), being the manner particularized in the NOICC and if so, secondly, whether the visa should be cancelled.

1. The vast bulk of his oral evidence, documentary case and submissions have been directed to the first of these issues. He has said very little in the way of evidence about the second.

1. As will be seen, I am satisfied on the evidence available to the Tribunal that the Certificate is a bogus document as defined in the Act; that the applicant has failed to comply with Sec 103 by providing it to the Department in support of his visa application; and that the visa should, as a matter of discretion, be cancelled.

Procedural steps in the review, the documents relied on, the hearing and an overview of the applicant’s review case

1. The Review Application was filed on 14 April 2022 and is within time.

1. A Hearing Invitation was sent to the applicant via his agent on 21 June 2022 for a telephone hearing. This was in due course accepted and, in his Hearing Response form, the applicant identified some documents on which he said would rely.

1. On or about 14 July 2022 a written submission and the documents referred to in the submission, including an RTO Data Report on an incorporated entity associated with IAC and a USI Transcript of his studies in the Diploma, were filed.

1. The hearing took place on the telephone as scheduled on 20 July 2022 when the applicant appeared together with the agent. His oral evidence was given in English without apparent difficulty and the agent made some short oral submissions during and at the end of his evidence. In doing so the agent sought an adjournment at one stage to enable further evidence to be provided, evidence which (as far as I could tell) would have been readily available to the applicant well prior to the hearing.

1. For that and other reasons given during my exchanges with the agent about the utility of an adjournment I refused the application.

1. I do not accept the applicant’s primary contention that the Certificate is an authentic document which IAC validly issued to him on or about 11 March 2020. The vast bulk of the documentary evidence in this case points in the other direction and establishes to my satisfaction that, if IAC issued the Certificate to him, it had no authority to do so. Indeed, it is reasonably clear on the evidence led that it had been prohibited from doing so by the intervention of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) as from in or about June 2019. Indeed, the applicant’s review submission itself appears to accept that IAC did not have, for that reason, any authority to issue the Certificate.

1. Nor do I accept the applicant’s evidence that he was unaware that IAC had been suspended from operating as a college, and prohibited from issuing any certificates, at the time the Certificate was issued. This contention is, at best, difficult to reconcile with the objective features of the case. It is also difficult to reconcile with other parts of his evidence. The Tribunal takes notice of the fact, as it is entitled to do, that students who are enrolled at a

provider which has been suspended from operating will ordinarily become aware of it, one way or another, even if (as in this case) their enrollment is only for a short time. I thus do not accept the applicant’s assertion that he was nothing more than an innocent victim of a fraud (his word) perpetrated by IAC.

1. Curiously, his review case is in this respect very different to the position he took when dealing with the Department. In the response to the NOICC he said there was no element of fraud in the issue of the Certificate and no evidence that the applicant was complicit in any fraud.

1. Moreover, as will be seen, the evidence which the applicant gave to the Department in August 2020 concerning his enrollment in and studies for the Diploma was seriously misleading and known by him to be so at that time. His (former) agent accepted as much in her response to the NOICC.

1. In any event, at least insofar as the issue of non-compliance is concerned, it obviously does not matter whether the applicant was aware of the operating status of IAC at the time he received the Certificate. Sec 103, read in conjunction with the other relevant provisions in Part 2, Division 3 Subdivision C of the Act makes this clear.

1. As will be seen, I am satisfied on the evidence available to the Tribunal that the Certificate is a bogus document; that the Minister acted reasonably in forming a suspicion that the Certificate is such a document; that the applicant has failed to comply with Sec 103 by providing it to the Department in support of his visa application; and that the visa should, as a matter of discretion, be cancelled.

Other documentary aspects

1. In addition to the applicant’s documentary case and his oral evidence the Tribunal has been provided with a physical file from the Department which does contain some useful material. Although a Sec 376 certificate has been issued it is necessary for the Tribunal, given the nature of the issues, to consider some of this material and, to that end, identify the documents and describe the information in them.

1. Before doing so the Tribunal notes that the substance of this information was put to the applicant in the NOICC and in the decision under review.

1. Apart from the Certificate, the Department file contains internal communications containing confidential or protected information and advice from a Senior Investigator in the Australian Border Force on the authenticity of the Certificate, on the effect of an “evidentiary certificate” from the ASQA received on 14 September 2021 in relation to certificates issued by Training during the period from 30 January 2020 to 7July 2021, on the reliability of information in a USI Transcript generated on 22 March 2022, and on other evidence which the applicant gave to the Department to procure the visa in a Statement of Clarification undated but apparently sent to the Department on 3 August 2020 in response to a request from the Department to address concerns about the gap in his studies during the period from 30 June 2019 to 17 February 2020. The file also contains a copy of the NOICC; his response to the NOICC dated 23 March 2022; an email from the applicant to IAC sent on 16 March 2022; an email from Lumiere Solutions sent to him on 23 March 2022; and, of course, the decision under review.

1. The Tribunal has also had access to a PRISMS record and a Movements Details record. Some of the information in these records was discussed with the applicant at the hearing and was not controversial.

The information on which the decision under review was based

1. It is recited in the NOICC that the application for the visa was filed by the applicant on 5 May 2020 and that, on 1 June of that year, the Department sent to him an invitation to comment on his intention to stay in Australia as a genuine temporary student and, more particularly, to address concerns arising from the gap in his studies mentioned earlier.

1. In response to that invitation, on 3 August 2020, that is two months after the invitation was served on him, a delay which he has never explained, the applicant provided to the Department a Statement of Clarification in which he said (among other things) that in July 2019 he enrolled in the Diploma and, after receiving a “few credit exemptions”, completed this course in March 2020. In support of this he provided a copy of the Certificate and a Record of Results obtained from his studies in the Diploma, information which appears on the reverse side of the Certificate. He said in this Statement that he could not provide a COE for this course because IAC was “an RTO College” and not a registered CRICOS provider. He said that he did not then understand the significance of being enrolled at such a provider. He did not provide any other documentary evidence at this stage to establish that he was enrolled in and studied this course during that period.

1. It is also recited in the NOICC that, following the grant of the visa, the Department had received information to the effect that ASQA had suspended IAC on 5 June 2019 for the period from 12 June 2019 to 12 March 2020 which had the effect of prohibiting IAC from conducting any courses and from issuing any completion certificates during that period. Further, on 14 September 2021, ASQA had provided other information to the Department which indicated that there were no valid certificates issued by IAC between 30 January 2020 and 7 July 2021.

1. This being so, the Department stated in the NOICC that the Certificate was a bogus document and that the applicant had failed to comply with Sec 103. Initially he was given a period of 7 days within which to respond but this was later extended at his request to 25 March 2022.

1. On 16 March 2022 the applicant sent an email to IAC which in effect sought confirmation that the Certificate was a genuine document. He apparently attached a copy of the Certificate to this email and informed them that the Department considered it to be non- genuine. There has, according to his evidence, been no reply to this email. The Tribunal has no difficulty accepting this aspect of it.

1. On 23 March 2022 the applicant’s former agent responded to the NOICC by asserting that the applicant had in fact completed the Diploma by a recognition of prior learning (RPL) and that the qualification had been issued to him on that basis. In support of this the agent attached a copy of an Authenticated Vocational Education and Training Transcript (USI Transcript) of the applicant’s studies in the Diploma, a document which (as noted earlier) bears an issue date of 22 March 2022. The USI Transcript states that the applicant had completed the requirements for the Diploma by means of RPL not at IAC but at another college, namely the Victorian College of Vocational Excellence (VCVE). The enrollment period is specified in the Transcript as being from 4 March 2020 to 11 March 2020, a period of 7 days.

1. Pausing here for a moment, the other documents, including the records provided by the applicant in support of his review case, establish that IAC was, prior to 5 June 2019, an Institute operated by an incorporated entity, namely Training Organisation Victoria Pty Ltd (Training). Training was, according to these documents, a Registered Training Organization (RTO) which also operated VCVE.

1. The NOICC response addresses other factors which are said to support the conclusion that the visa should not be cancelled. These will be considered later when dealing with the issue of whether the visa should be cancelled but two things may be noted at this stage. Firstly, contrary to what the agent indicates in her response, the applicant did not file a Form 1023 correcting the misleading information referred to earlier which, she accepts, he had given in his Statement of Clarification about his studies in the Diploma, namely that he had been enrolled in the Diploma at IAC from July 2019 and that, after having obtained a “few credit exemptions”, he had completed the course in March 2020. Secondly, despite having earlier indicated in the response that the applicant had completed that course in March 2020 by means of RPL, the agent asserts that the applicant was still in the process of completing it. If she was mistaken about this, or simply misunderstood her instructions, the applicant has given no evidence to this effect in the review.

1. The Department’s file confirms that, on 24 March 2022, it sought advice from the Investigations Unit in relation to the information in the USI Transcript which, apart from the identity of the course provider, was said to be consistent with the information in the Certificate. The Department’s email to the Investigations Unit states that a check had been carried out using the details provided on the USI website and that these details appeared to authenticate that information or, put another way, appeared to confirm that the USI Transcript which the applicant had provided was an authentic document.

1. The 24 March 2022 email goes on to state that IAC had informed ASQA that they had not issued any Certificates for a period which included the date on which the Certificate was purportedly issued but concerns were nonetheless held that the information in the USI Transcript suggested otherwise.

1. On 4 April 2022 a Senior Investigator in the Investigations Unit replied to the Department’s email. In the reply it was pointed out that USI did not verify information it receives when a request is made to update student records on the USI website, the information is added automatically, and that the circumstances in which the request was made in this case attracted suspicion for various reasons. Firstly, it was noted that the request was not made until 2 years after the qualification was purportedly obtained, which was unusual. Secondly, it was not made by IAC but rather an unrelated third party, namely Lumiere Solutions. Thirdly, ASQA had confirmed that neither IAC nor VCVE issued any certificates between 30 January 2020 and 7 July 2021. Fourthly, the Diploma is recorded in the USI Transcript as having been completed by the applicant at VCVE rather than IAC. Lastly, reference was made to the inconsistent information which the applicant had provided in support of the visa application and in his response to the NOICC regarding how he completed the units in the Diploma and the period it took him to do that, which had elapsed while Training was suspended by ASQA from operating. This was, according to the Senior Investigator, a significant integrity concern.

1. These circumstances indicated to the Senior Investigator that the requested change to the applicant’s USI record was likely made to reflect the bogus information in the Certificate.

The first issue; has there been non-compliance with Sec 103 in the ways articulated in the NOICC?

1. As to the issue of whether there was non-compliance it is of course necessary in this case for the Tribunal to also consider the reasons given by the delegate in the decision under review for his finding on the issue of non-compliance and the evidence which the applicant has given on the review relating to this issue.

1. In the decision, the delegate noted that the applicant had disputed the non-compliance, set out the applicant’s reasons for doing so and listed the documents on which the applicant

had relied.

1. Having done that the delegate gave quite detailed reasons to support his finding on the issue of non-compliance with Sec 103. In summary, he noted that the Department had been informed by USI that the Transcript did not purport to verify that the applicant had in fact completed the Diploma, it was not to be regarded as a confirmation of that qualification and did not purport to authenticate the Certificate. Moreover, the circumstances in which the USI Transcript came into existence some 2 years after the course was said to have been completed raised concerns about the reliability of the Certificate. Moreover, the fact that the recorded details for the Diploma, which found their way into the Transcript, had been provided by an unrelated third party, namely Lumiere Solutions and not by IAC heightened these concerns, as did the fact that the Certificate was purportedly issued by IAC whereas the USI Transcript identifies VCVE as the course provider.

1. The delegate went on to observe that in circumstances where the applicant had not provided a reply from IAC to his email of 16 March 2022 it had no documentary evidence from IAC to confirm the legitimacy of the Certificate.

1. Another concern arose from the inconsistencies between the recorded details in the Record of Results on the reverse side of the Certificate and the USI Transcript. The Results indicated that the applicant had been assessed as competent in each of the units which comprised the course whereas the Transcript indicated that he had fulfilled the requirements in each unit by means of RPL during an enrolment period which lasted for one week in March 2020. The delegate considered this to be important because of the differences between an assessment of competency in the units which comprised the course, which connote an extended period of study, when compared to an RPL in each unit which did not require any study in that unit. This was, according to the delegate, significant given that the Certificate was provided by the applicant to explain an extensive study gap from 30 June 2019 to 17 February 2020.

1. Reference was made to the misleading information which the applicant had provided to the Department in his Statement of Clarification regarding his studies in the Diploma which gave rise to other possible non-compliances. That the applicant may have obtained “a few credit exemptions” in the Diploma, as he claimed to have done in his Statement, was not in fact what the USI Transcript suggested, namely that he had obtained the qualification without undertaking any study in the course at all.

1. That the Certificate was purportedly issued on 11 March 2020 during a period when, according to AQSA, no certificates were issued by Training at all was also a concern, as was the agent’s statement in the response to the NOICC that the applicant was currently in the process of completing the Diploma. It was noted that the information in a PRISMS record did not support that proposition.

1. For those reasons the delegate found that the Certificate was a bogus document and that the applicant had consequently failed to comply with Sec 103.

1. Turning to the evidence led by the applicant on the review, his entire documentary case consists of those documents referred to in his submission, namely an ABN Search, an RTO Data Report and a USI Transcript generated on 13 July 2022, a document which is identical to the USI Transcript generated on 22 March 2022.

1. The RTO Data Report appears to confirm that Training’s registration as an RTO provider had been cancelled at the time the Certificate was purportedly issued on 11 March 2020 and that it was under the management of ASQA at that time pursuant to the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011. Moreover, there is no evidence in

the applicant’s case to contradict the Department’s contention, the substance of which is reiterated in his submission, that ASQA had also prohibited Training from issuing any valid certificates during the period from 30 January 2020 and 7July 2021.

1. The applicant’s review case is that he received the Certificate from IAC on 11 March 2020; that he provided it to the Department in support of his visa application in response to a request for comment on a significant gap in his studies; that he was unaware at the time that IAC had been suspended from operating and was unaware at the time that it had been prohibited from issuing any certificates by ASQA; that he thus the victim of a “fraud” perpetrated by IAC.

1. He refers in his submission to the USI Transcript which, he says, confirms that he legitimately completed the Diploma as it contains the same details of his studies in this course as appear in the Certificate except that the Transcript wrongly records them as having been completed at VCVE, and not IAC. He goes on to say, among other things, that he has been wrongly accused of providing a bogus document to the Department and that it has not properly researched the authenticity of that document.

1. Having reviewed the evidence currently available to the Tribunal regarding the authenticity of the Certificate, including the advice which the delegate obtained prior to and after the NOICC, which I accept is reliable and which has not been contradicted by the applicant in any meaningful way, I am satisfied that the Certificate is a bogus document in that it is either a counterfeit document or has been purportedly issued by a person who had no authority to do so. I do not consider that the USI Transcript establishes otherwise.

1. If Sec 103 captures a document which has been altered by a person who had no authority to alter it on ordinary principles of statutory interpretation it must also include a document which has been issued without authority. Moreover, and in any event, I am well satisfied that the Minister has acted reasonably in forming a suspicion that the Certificate is a bogus document and that the applicant has consequently failed to comply with Sec 103 by providing it to the Department in support of his visa application.

1. I do have ongoing concerns arising from the paucity of the evidence he has led as to how he obtained the Certificate and what, if any, prior learning he relied on to procure it. But none of this really matters for the purposes of resolving the issue of non-compliance, whatever significance it might have at the discretionary stage.

1. For those reasons the Tribunal finds that there was non-compliance with Sec 103 by the applicant in the way described in the NOICC, as amplified in the decision under review.

The second issue; should the visa be cancelled?

1. Having found non-compliance with Sec 103 it is necessary for the Tribunal to consider whether the visa should be cancelled under Sec 109(1) 0f the Act.

1. Although cancellation is ultimately a discretionary matter for the Tribunal in exercising the power under Sec 109(1) the Tribunal should consider the matters referred to in Sec 109(1)

   (b) and (c) insofar as these are relevant to this case together with any other matters which come into play including those set out in the Department’s Procedural Advice Manual (PAM3). Thus, the matters referred to in Regulation 2.41 should be considered together with any other matters such as the consequences of cancellation, international obligations and so on.

1. As noted earlier in these reasons, the applicant asserted in his response to the NOICC that he had obtained the Diploma by means of recognized prior learning, and he referred to the

USI Transcript as evidence of that. He has led no documentary evidence, either before the Department or in the review, to establish what prior learning he had relied on to justify credit exemptions for the whole of that course. He did provide to the Department a Certificate of Completion for a Bachelor of Business Administration from a local University in India, a course which he apparently completed in early 2017, together with an Academic Transcript of his studies in a Master of Professional Accounting at the University of Tasmania, a course he was enrolled in during the Second Semester of 2018 in which he returned very poor results. But neither of these records throw any light on what, if any, information he provided to IAC to procure the Certificate and he has led no other evidence along these lines.

1. It seems not a little incongruous that the applicant would, in these circumstances, contend in his review submission that the Department had not properly researched the authenticity of the Certificate. If this contention is based on what he said in the response about wanting to carry out a forensic examination of the Certificate he has had ample time in which to do that but has not, or at least has led no evidence of having done so.

1. Contrary to what he said in the response about IAC having updated the applicant’s study record in the USI Transcript, the emails which he provided to the delegate do not establish that IAC engaged Lumiere Solutions to respond to the applicant’s 16 March 2022 email.

1. In any event, even if I was prepared to find that the applicant did nothing wrong in procuring the Certificate, and that he was the innocent victim he claims to be, having regard to the other circumstances which I am required to consider at the discretionary level, I am satisfied that the visa should be cancelled.

1. In his response to the NOICC his (former) agent accepted that the applicant had given, in the Statement of Clarification, misleading information to the Department about his study history in the Diploma but, in the review submission, he denies that he provided any misleading information to the Department. These two documents, for that and other reasons, are impossible to reconcile.

1. Moreover, it is readily apparent from what he said in the Clarification document, a document which the Department had invited him to provide to explain a gap in his studies, that he was providing information about that history which he knew to be false in significant respects. This was not some inadvertent mistake or the product of an inaccurate or incomplete recollection. Certainly, the applicant has led no evidence in the review to suggest that it was or to otherwise explain why he misrepresented his study history in the Diploma to the extent he did.

1. In his oral evidence he said, as I understood it, that the Clarification document was prepared by an agent, whom he did not identify. There was no suggestion to this effect in his response to the NOICC and I do not accept that it was but, in any event, he is responsible for the content of that document.

1. Absent any evidence to that effect, I have no difficulty in finding that he deliberately misrepresented the position and, in so doing, lied to the Department in relation to that history because he thought it would enhance his prospects of obtaining the visa, which it very obviously did.

1. This is a matter to which I must attribute significant adverse weight at the discretionary level. It also must undermine to some extent his general credibility and, more particularly, his evidence on other specific aspects which require consideration.

1. In his review submission the applicant nonetheless contends that he is a genuine student,

that he has been studying continuously in Australia and that he has good intentions of remaining here for that purpose. He says that he wants the visa to continue his study but does not say what it will consist of.

1. Absent reliable and informative documentary or other evidence to this effect, I am unable to accept any of these contentions.

1. On the applicant’s evidence, and much of this is confirmed by the independent records, he has been in Australia since July 2018 having come out here on a TU-500 visa to study the Master of Professional Accounting mentioned earlier. Having ceased studies in that course at the end of Semester 2 in that year he enrolled in a Master of Business Administration at the Holmes Institute in Sydney in early 2019. This was also well beyond his abilities, apparently. I do accept that he most likely had adjustment issues in the early stages but the actual nature and extent of them is, on the evidence, unclear.

1. He does appear to have been a good student at the undergraduate level in India. In any event, he quickly regressed into vocational courses here and, in August 2020, was enrolled in a Leadership and Management package at the Albright Institute. He has given no evidence in the review that he completed either of the courses in this package and did not refer to them in his response to the NOICC, a document filed in late March 2022.

1. In his oral evidence he said that he was currently enrolled in and studying a package of Hospitality courses at the Australis Skills Institute which, if he were to complete them, would require him to remain here until February 2024. The PRISMS record confirms as much. He also said that he was making progress in a Certificate IV in Commercial Cookery but has led no evidence of having any intention to establish a career in that field, although there is a rather oblique reference to him wanting to pursue a career in business in his response to the NOICC. Nor has he led any evidence about what he intends to do after he completes his studies in the Diploma of Hospitality Management.

1. Insofar as his evidence goes, he has been in Australia for more than 4 years without having completed any courses, apart from the Diploma at IAC a course which on his own case, as it was ultimately presented, did not require any study.

1. In his Clarification document he said that he would return to India when his course was completed which, in context, could only have been a reference to the Leadership and Management package, courses which apparently went no-where. If he had in fact completed these courses, or either of them, or made any real progress in them, I would have expected to have seen evidence from him to this effect.

1. He has led no other evidence to throw light on his present circumstances, nor has he led any evidence to explain what is, despite his assertions to the contrary, an unsatisfactory academic record in Australia.

1. In his response to the NOICC it is said that he has engaged in volunteer work as a cook at events during the pandemic and that reference letters to this effect are attached but there are none. He did not revisit this in his review submission, a document which deals almost exclusively with the circumstances in which the Certificate was issued.

1. Absent any meaningful evidence on the question of hardship I am not prepared to find that the applicant will suffer any beyond what will necessarily follow from the cancellation of his visa. I accept he has made some progress in the CIV and that his studies in this course will come to an end prematurely, as will his enrollment in the other course, but do not regard these aspects to be of any great weight in the overall circumstances of this case.

1. There do not appear to be any other relevant matters about which evidence has been led or which otherwise require specific consideration. Certainly, the applicant has made no submissions on them.

Summary and conclusion

1. Having reached the view at the end of the hearing that there had been relevant non- compliance with Sec 103, after considering the applicant’s overall circumstances and after given due weight to the relevant matters, the Tribunal concluded that his visa should be cancelled.

DECISION

1. The Tribunal thus affirmed the decision under review.

Michael Bradford Member