Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship & Anor; Plaintiff M106 of 2011 by his Litigation Guardian, Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

The High Court of Australia considered two applications for judicial review concerning the lawfulness of decisions made by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to refuse to grant visas to two individuals, referred to as Plaintiff M70/2011 and Plaintiff M106/2011. The applicants were asylum seekers who had arrived in Australia by boat and were detained offshore. The core of the dispute revolved around the validity of the Minister's decisions to refuse their visa applications, which were made under specific provisions of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth).

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the Minister's decisions to refuse the visa applications were vitiated by jurisdictional error. Specifically, the Court had to determine if the Minister, in making those decisions, had failed to exercise the power conferred upon him by the relevant legislative provisions, or if he had exercised that power in a manner that was legally invalid. This involved an examination of the scope of the Minister's discretion and the procedural requirements that must be met when exercising such powers.

The Court's reasoning focused on the proper interpretation of section 499 of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth) and Regulation 7.11 of the *Migration Regulations 1994* (Cth). The Court held that the Minister's decisions were invalid because the delegate who made the decisions on behalf of the Minister had not been validly appointed. The Court found that the instrument of delegation did not confer the necessary authority to make the specific decisions in question, thereby rendering the purported exercise of power by the delegate unlawful. Consequently, the Minister was deemed not to have validly exercised his power to refuse the visa applications, leading to a jurisdictional error.

The High Court allowed the applications for judicial review and quashed the decisions of the Minister to refuse the visa applications. The matter was remitted to the Minister for reconsideration according to law.