Pham and Ors v Minister For Immigration and Anor (No.2)

Pham and Ors v Minister for Immigration and Anor (No.2) concerned an application for judicial review brought by the applicants, Mr. Pham and others, against the Minister for Immigration and the second respondent. The applicants sought to challenge decisions made by the Minister, which they contended were affected by jurisdictional error. The matter was heard in the Federal Court of Australia.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the Minister, in making the impugned decisions, had failed to afford the applicants procedural fairness. Specifically, the applicants argued that they were not given adequate notice of the adverse information that the Minister intended to rely upon in making those decisions, nor were they provided with a sufficient opportunity to respond to that information.

Judge Egan found that the Minister's decisions were vitiated by jurisdictional error due to a breach of the duty to provide procedural fairness. His Honour reasoned that the principles of procedural fairness require that a person be informed of the case they have to meet and be given a reasonable opportunity to answer it. In this instance, the adverse information was not adequately disclosed to the applicants, thereby preventing them from making a meaningful response. The Court applied established principles of administrative law concerning the content and scope of procedural fairness obligations.

The Court made orders setting aside the decisions of the Minister and remitting the matters to the Minister for reconsideration according to law.