Plaintiff S118/2018 v Minister for Home Affairs & Ors

The High Court of Australia heard an application by Plaintiff S118/2018 against the Minister for Home Affairs and other related parties. The plaintiff sought an order to show cause, requesting relief in the form of a declaration, certiorari, mandamus, or an injunction. The defendants had initially sought to dismiss the application for failure to prosecute, but later withdrew that specific ground, instead arguing for dismissal on the merits.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the plaintiff's application for an order to show cause should be dismissed on its merits. This involved considering the plaintiff's submissions, which sought to distinguish the present case from the High Court's decision in *Plaintiff S10 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship* (2012) 246 CLR 636, particularly concerning the nature of the power being impugned and whether it invoked a constitutional matter.

The Court reasoned that the plaintiff's argument, suggesting the impugned decision was an exercise of non-statutory power conditioned by procedural fairness, did not raise a matter for interpretation under the Constitution, as concluded by the plurality and Justices French and Kiefel in *Plaintiff S10*. The plaintiff did not attend the hearing but had indicated a willingness for the application to be heard in his absence based on written submissions. The Court ultimately dismissed the plaintiff's application for an order to show cause. The Court ordered that the plaintiff's application filed on 30 April 2018 be dismissed with costs.