Plaintiff P25 of 2017 v Minister for Immigration and; Plaintiff P26 of 2017 v Minister for Immigration

In *Plaintiff P25 of 2017 v Minister for Immigration and; Plaintiff P26 of 2017 v Minister for Immigration*, Vasta J of the Federal Court of Australia considered whether the decisions of two separate delegates of the Minister for Immigration to refuse protection visas were affected by jurisdictional error. The plaintiffs, who were presumably the applicants for the protection visas, contended that the delegates' decisions suffered from such an error.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the identical findings and reasons provided by two distinct delegates, despite being made in relation to separate applications, indicated a lack of independent intellectual assessment of the claims made by each plaintiff. This raised the question of whether such a failure constituted jurisdictional error, thereby invalidating the delegates' decisions.

Vasta J found that the delegates' decisions were indeed affected by jurisdictional error. The Court reasoned that the complete congruence of the findings and reasons, without any discernible differentiation or independent analysis tailored to each plaintiff's specific circumstances, demonstrated that the delegates had not undertaken an independent intellectual assessment of the claims. This failure to engage with the individual merits of each application meant that the delegates had not properly exercised their statutory power, leading to the establishment of jurisdictional error. Consequently, the Court issued the writs sought by the plaintiffs.