Plaintiff M150 of 2013 v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection

The plaintiff, an Ethiopian national who arrived in Australia as a stowaway, sought a protection visa. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection had made a determination under section 85 of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth) limiting the number of protection visas that could be granted in the financial year. The plaintiff's application, if granted, would exceed this limit. The dispute before the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia concerned the validity of the Minister's determination and whether section 85 applied to protection visas.

The central legal issues before the Court were whether the Minister's determination made under section 85 of the *Migration Act* was valid, and consequently, whether this power extended to limiting the grant of protection visas. The Court was required to consider the interaction between section 85, which allows the Minister to determine the maximum number of visas of a specified class that may be granted in a financial year, and section 65A of the Act, which imposes a time limit for the decision on protection visa applications.

The Court reasoned that section 85 and section 86 of the *Migration Act*, which together establish a capping scheme for visas, were intended for managing the broader migration program and did not logically apply to all visa classes, particularly those not directly related to such programs. The Court found that the purpose and scheme of protection visas, underscored by the mandatory decisional time limit imposed by section 65A(1), were inconsistent with the application of the general capping provisions in sections 85 and 86. The Court concluded that section 65A, as a specific provision relating to protection visas, imposed an obligation to decide and to decide within a certain time, which was not displaced by the general provisions of sections 85 and 86.

The Court answered the questions posed in the special case, determining that the Minister's determination made on 4 March 2014 pursuant to section 85 of the *Migration Act* was invalid. The Court ordered that a writ of mandamus issue directing the Minister to consider and determine the plaintiff's application for a Protection (Class XA) visa according to law. The defendants were ordered to pay the plaintiff's costs of the special case.