Nicholls and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (Citizenship)

This matter concerned an application for citizenship by conferral made by a citizen of the United Kingdom. The applicant lodged her application on 16 July 2016 and subsequently left Australia. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection invited the applicant to attend a citizenship interview and test on 1 November 2016, which she failed to attend. After further correspondence from the Department requesting the applicant to book a new appointment, which she did not do, a decision was made on her application. The applicant was outside Australia at the time of the delegate's decision.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the applicant had met the requirements of section 21(2A) of the *Australian Citizenship Act 2007* (Cth), specifically whether she had sat and successfully completed an approved citizenship test. A secondary issue, concerning whether the applicant was in Australia at the time of the decision pursuant to section 24(5) of the Act, was not pressed by the respondent as the applicant was by then in Australia.

The Tribunal found that the applicant had not met the requirements of section 21(2A) as she had failed to attend the scheduled citizenship test and had not subsequently booked a new appointment as requested by the Department. The Tribunal considered the applicant's explanations for her non-attendance and her subsequent attempts to contact the Department, but concluded that these did not satisfy the requirement to successfully complete the test. The purpose of the citizenship test, as outlined in the Department's policy, is to assess an applicant's understanding of Australian citizenship and their basic knowledge of English, and it is expected that applicants will have acquired this knowledge prior to applying and will successfully complete the test. The Tribunal affirmed the delegate's decision.