Plaintiff M168/10 v The Commonwealth

In matters M168/2010, M170/2010, M172/2010 and M174/2010, Crennan J of the High Court of Australia considered applications for interlocutory injunctions brought by plaintiffs who had arrived in Australian waters by boat and were treated as unlawful non-citizens under the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth). The plaintiffs sought to restrain their detention on Christmas Island and subsequent transfer to mainland immigration detention, arguing that such detention was unlawful.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the plaintiffs had established a prima facie case that their continuing detention on the mainland was unlawful, thereby justifying the grant of interlocutory injunctions. This required the Court to consider the threshold for establishing a "prima facie case" in the context of immigration detention.

Crennan J dismissed the applications for interlocutory injunctions in these matters. The Court reasoned that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits to warrant the grant of such urgent relief. The proceedings were subsequently stood out of the list to await the determination of related proceedings, with liberty to apply. In separate, but related, matters (M169/2010, M171/2010, M173/2010 and M175/2010), the Court made orders extending time for applications related to detention decisions and adjourned a directions hearing, indicating that the substantive legal issues were still to be fully determined.