Salehi and Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs (Citizenship)

Salehi and Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs (Citizenship) [2020] AATA 4968 (10 December 2020)
Division:GENERAL DIVISION
File Number(s): 2018/0785
Re:Gul Bakht Salehi
APPLICANT

AndMinister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs
RESPONDENT

DECISION
Tribunal:Senior Member D. J. Morris
Date:10 December 2020
Place:Melbourne

The Tribunal decides to affirm the decision under review.
...................[sgd].....................................................
Senior Member D. J. Morris
Catchwords
CITIZENSHIP – identity of applicant – threshold requirement not met –– inconsistency in information provided to Department – inconsistency in evidence given at hearing compared with previous interviews and written submissions – National Identity Proofing Guidelines – desirability of consistency in application of policy – unsatisfactory explanation for inconsistencies in life story – reasonable satisfaction of identity not reached – decision under review affirmed
Legislation
Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth), ss 21, 24, 45A
Cases
Briginshaw v Briginshaw [1938] HCA 34
Drake and Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (No. 2), Re [1979] AATA 179; (1979) 2 ALD 634
Neat Holdings Pty Limited v Karajan Holdings Pty Limited and Ors [1992] HCA 86
Secondary Materials
National Identity Proofing Guidelines, Department of Home Affairs (2016)
REASONS FOR DECISION
Senior Member D. J. Morris
10 December 2020
Background

The Applicant in this matter, Mrs Salehi, first arrived in Australia in 2011 as a dependant applicant on a Global Special Humanitarian (Subclass 202) visa granted offshore in August 2009. In October 2013, she lodged an application for Australian citizenship by conferral, which was found to be invalid in November 2013 as Mrs Salehi did not provide required certified copies of proof of identity documents. In addition, the Applicant was informed that she did not at that time satisfy the residence requirement and would not do so until 19 April 2015.
On 23 May 2014, Mrs Salehi lodged a second application for Australian citizenship by conferral. This was found to be invalid in June 2014, as she did not meet the residence requirement.
On 20 February 2015, Mrs Salehi lodged a third application for Australian citizenship by conferral, but that was refused on 16 April 2015, as she still did not satisfy the residence requirement.
On 29 April 2015, Mrs Salehi lodged a fourth application for Australian citizenship by conferral. That application was refused by a delegate of the Respondent as she did not provide the required proof of identity documents.
On 3 June 2015, Mrs Salehi lodged a fifth application for Australian citizenship by conferral.
On 23 March 2017, the Applicant participated in a citizenship interview at the Melbourne office of the Department of Home Affairs (the Department). The purpose of the interview was to gather information to assess her citizenship application.
In August 2017, the Department wrote to Mrs Salehi inviting her to provide additional information in support of her application, and to comment on or provide an explanation for, information provided to the Department which the Department considered inconsistent.
In September 2017, the Applicant provided a written statement and a letter from her treating general practitioner, and statutory declarations from the President of the Victorian Afghan Associations Network and the President of the Shamama Association of Australia.
On 9 February 2018, the delegate of the Respondent decided that he was not satisfied of the Applicant’s identity under section 24(3) of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (the Act) and, as a consequence, the delegate was prohibited from approving the application for conferral of Australian citizenship. It is this decision that Mrs Salehi has brought to the Tribunal for review.
A hearing was held on 4 September 2019. The Applicant was represented by her son, Mr Khan Salehi, who made submissions on her behalf. The Respondent was represented by Mr Jamie Grant of counsel, instructed by Mr Scott Hunter of Sparke Helmore Lawyers.
Mrs Salehi gave evidence and was cross-examined by Mr Grant. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Tribunal gave leave for the parties to lodge further written submissions, which they both did.
Both parties provided Statements of Facts, Issue and Contentions prior to the hearing. The parties also provided several other documents, which were admitted into evidence by the Tribunal. The Respondent provided documents under section 37 of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975: a volume of (‘T’) documents; a volume of supplementary (‘ST’) documents; and a volume of further supplementary (‘FST’) documents. A schedule of other exhibits admitted into evidence is annexed to these reasons.
Legislative Framework
Section 21(1) of the Act sets out that a person may make an application to the Minister to become an Australian citizen. Section 24 of the Act provides that the Minister must approve or refuse to approve the person becoming an Australian citizen.
Section 24(3) of the Act concerns identity:
Identity
(3) The Minister must not approve the person becoming an Australian citizen unless the Minister is satisfied of the identity of the person.
Division 5 of the Act sets out in detail the identity provisions.
In considering Mrs Salehi’s citizenship application, the delegate also consulted a document produced by the Department titled Citizenship Policy, DIBP (the Policy) and dated 1 June 2016. Chapter 13 of the Policy provides guidance to departmental officers in relation to the provisions of Division 5 of the Act. At the beginning of Chapter 13, the Policy states:
The identity provisions prohibit the approval of a citizenship application in cases where the decision maker (the Minister or their delegate) is not satisfied of the person’s identity.
In addition to being a legislative requirement under the Act, the Australian community expects that decision makers will not approve a person for citizenship or give evidence of citizenship if they are not satisfied of the person’s identity.
The Policy goes on to state that the concept of identity is as described in what was then the Attorney-General’s Department National Identity Proofing Guidelines of 2004 and provides a website link to the Guidelines. The successor of that document is the National Identity Proofing Guidelines, published by the Department of Home Affairs in 2016 (the Guidelines).
The policy provides guidance to decision-makers (principally officers of the Department who hold the Minister’s delegation) in how they should come to a state of satisfaction about the identity of a person applying for Australian citizenship. Whilst the policy is not binding on the Tribunal, standing in the shoes of an original decision-maker, the approach of Brennan J (as His Honour then was, writing as President of this Tribunal) in Re: Drakeand Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (No. 2 )[1979] AATA 179; (1979) 2 ALD 634, relevantly set out below, has been subsequently approved of by the Courts:
In my view, the Tribunal, being entitled to determine its own practice in respect of the part which Ministerial policy plays in the making of Tribunal decisions, should adopt the following practice:
When the Tribunal is reviewing the exercise of a discretionary power reposed in a Minister, and the Minister has adopted a general policy to guide him in the exercise of the power, the Tribunal will ordinarily apply that policy in reviewing the decision, unless the policy is unlawful or unless its application tends to produce an unjust decision in the circumstances of the particular case. Where the policy would ordinarily be applied, an argument against the policy itself or against its application in the particular case will be considered, but cogent reasons will have to be shown against its application, especially if the policy is shown to have been exposed to Parliamentary scrutiny.
The general practice of the Tribunal will not preclude the Tribunal from making appropriate observations on Ministerial policy, and thus contributing the benefit of its experience to the growth or modification of general policy; but the practice is intended to leave to the Minister the political responsibility for broad policy, to permit the Tribunal to function as an adjudicative tribunal rather than as a political policy-maker, and to facilitate the making of consistent decisions in the exercise of the same discretionary power.
Consequently, the Tribunal is guided by the policy in considering whether it can be satisfied of the identity of the Applicant in terms of her application for Australian citizenship.
The Applicant’s contentions
Mrs Salehi in her written submissions submitted that she is a citizen of Afghanistan, born in Ghazani, Jhuguri, in 1951. She surveyed her different applications for Australian citizenship and referred to the statutory declarations from the President of the Victorian Afghan Associations Network and the President of the Shahmama Association of Australia.
Mrs Salehi stated that her son, Mr Khan Salehi, is the Secretary General of the latter association; and that there would be no reason the local Afghan community would elect him to that role if he were not Afghani.
The Applicant said that in September 2017 she had provided her Taskera (i.e. an Afghan Government identity document) to the Department.
Mrs Salehi said she explained to the Department that she was living in Pakistan as an illegal refugee for more than a decade and could not declare her address to the Pakistani Police. She said she has had no formal education and is illiterate, and she provided a letter from her landlord in Pakistan with her accommodation details. She said that she does not understand English calendars or dates and was disadvantaged because she always used interpreters when dealing with Department officers. She said she was unaware how the interpreters would convert dates from the calendar used in Afghanistan (i.e. the Solar Hijri calendar) to the Gregorian calendar, commonly used in Australia.
Mrs Salehi stated that she has several physical and health issues and that some of the medication she uses makes her drowsy and forgetful. Mrs Salehi also stated that she had provided a 1940 land document, as proof that her family was living in Afghanistan at that time and said that her family still owns the land and property to which this document refers.
Mrs Salehi said that the Department, in refusing her citizenship application, relied on a Complex Identity Advice Report (CIA) which states:
CIA investigations have established that the Client and members of her extended family have made multiple false declarations as to their identity and family composition and therefore their identity….CIA concludes that the Client GUL BAKHT SALEHI is most likely to be born in Afghanistan and is a dual Afghan/Pakistan citizen.
Mrs Salehi went on to dispute some of the conclusions in the CIA about family relationships. She concluded that she had submitted a genuine Taskera issued by the Afghan authorities and the Tribunal should place great weight on this document, as well as the 1940 land document. The Applicant submitted that she had no reason to provide bogus documents to the Department in relation to her citizenship application.
The Respondent’s contentions
The Respondent submitted that the delegate who made the reviewable decision had regard to the Guidelines which state that the three pillars for verifying a person’s identity are
(1) documents; (2) personal identifiers/biometrics; and (3) life story including any documented evidence of their social footprint (T21).
The Respondent noted that Mrs Salehi had provided a Taskera. However, it considered that, given the unreliability of these documents in general and the absence of any other identity documents form the time of the Applicant’s claimed birth in 1951 or any documents issued after 1985, the delegate was unable to accept this sole document as evidence of Mrs Salehi’s identity and placed little weight on it. The delegate was concerned that the Applicant had not provided any documents supporting her identity from 1985 onwards. In terms of an affidavit provided by a Mr Shoukat Ali, in lieu of a police clearance certificate, the Respondent submitted the delegate had concerns about the genuineness of this document and therefore did not accord it any weight.
In terms of personal identifiers provided by Mrs Salehi, the Respondent submitted they are consistent, but had only been captured since her offshore application for a Global Special Humanitarian (subclass 202) visa was lodged in September 2008.
The Respondent submitted that the delegate found several inconsistencies in the Applicant’s life story. The date Mrs Salehi claimed to have left Afghanistan for Pakistan was not consistent with the date provided by family members. The delegate found that the Applicant had resided in Pakistan for a longer period than she claimed, and did not accept that Mrs Salehi had been unable to remember the names, number of children and place of their residence. The delegate found that the Applicant was withholding information which could otherwise reveal the true identity of her and her family.
The delegate found that the Applicant had submitted a bogus affidavit to conceal her identity and had provided inconsistent information about her claimed residence in Pakistan before she came to Australia.
The delegate placed little weight on the submissions from the Applicant that inconsistencies in what she had told Department officers were explained by her health issues and medication she is taking. The delegate noted that, given the opportunity to clarify information and obtain identity documents from family members residing overseas to support her identity, Mrs Salehi failed to provide sufficient details to allay the Department’s concerns.
In terms of the CIA, the Respondent repeated the same extracts Mrs Salehi has quoted above, and stated:
CIA accordingly assesses the Client’s stated identity as Identity Not Supported. The above analysis strongly suggest[s] serious identity concerns with her alleged children, one of whom has been found to be an Australian citizen.
In respect of what Mrs Salehi describes as the 1940 land documents, the Respondent noted that the CIA had considered those documents and concluded:
While these documents tend to support the Client’s family’s claimed Afghan origins, they are not evidence of identity and do not in any way allay CIA’s concerns regarding the Client and her family’s identity and current nationality. In particular, they do not preclude them from having acquired Pakistan citizenship from then.
The Respondent submitted that the Taskera submitted by Mrs Salehi was considered in the CIA, together with other Taskeras submitted by other family members. The CIA found they were “most likely bogus” as the documents themselves indicate they were obtained in person in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006, which was after Mrs Salehi claimed to have departed Afghanistan.
Evidence of the Applicant
The Applicant was asked about different dates on the English translation of the Taskera. She responded that she was illiterate and had no idea what the translator had written. She was asked whether she travelled to Afghanistan from where she was living in Pakistan to obtain the Taskera and said she travelled to Afghanistan with her husband, stayed for a few nights and applied for the Taskera, providing to the authorities some land documents to support her identity and former location. Asked directly when that visit took place, Mrs Salehi said that she could not recall.
Under cross-examination, Mrs Salehi reiterated that she lived in Pakistan for ‘three or four years’ and then returned to Afghanistan with her husband and her son to obtain the Taskera. Mr Grant said to the Applicant that this was not what she had told the Department, and she responded, “they didn’t ask that question”.
Mr Grant then read an extract from the interview Mrs Salehi had with a Department officer (FST, p 14):
Officer: …So you have presented a Tazkira.
Ms Salehi: Yes.
Officer: So where did you obtain your Tazkira?
Ms Salehi: From (indistinct).
Officer: So did you bring it when you left the country or did you go back to get it?
Ms Salehi: So when I was in Afghanistan I obtained my Tazkira.
Officer: Okay, so before they left the country they already had Tazkira.
Ms Salehi: Yes. So after that we didn’t go to Afghanistan.
Officer: Okay. Do you know what documents you had to present to get Tazkira?
Ms Salehi: Yes, I didn’t know his father went to ----
Officer: Get all the documents.
Ms Salehi: So in Afghanistan there’s no law there that women can go and get (indistinct).
Officer: Yes.
Ms Salehi: So I was 16 years old, got married and had the children. Over there the man look after and then we had to look after the man.
Officer: Okay. So you got the Tazkira before you moved to Pakistan and you husband helped you to get the Tazkira.
Ms Salehi: Yes, on that time we are living at the place, so we had the Tazkira after that.
In response, Mrs Salehi told the Tribunal that they had left all their belongings in Afghanistan and went to Pakistan for three or four years and then returned to Afghanistan and stayed with acquaintances; which was when she obtained her Taskera. She said that she went to the [government] office and that there were witnesses. Mrs Salehi said she was accompanied by her son. When asked whether Razia Salehi accompanied her on this occasion, Mrs Salehi said she did not.
Mr Grant asked why the Taskera number for Razia Batool, who Mrs Salehi claims is her daughter, was 305506 and the Taskera submitted by the Applicant had the number 305505, and that Razia was not, on her evidence, with her when she obtained the Taskera. Mrs Salehi said she “was not sure about that”.
Mrs Salehi was asked whether she was aware that the Department sought further information and that her son responded by email to that request. She said, “I can’t remember anything, so I can’t recall documents”.
An email (T Documents, p 43) from Khan Ali (Mr Khan Salehi) dated 14 September 2017, written as a letter from the Applicant, was then read out to Mrs Salehi.
At this stage of her evidence, Mrs Salehi said she was too distressed and did not want to answer any further questions.
Evidence of Ms Sara Bartool
Mr Khan Salehi asked Ms Bartool whether Razia Bartool was the same person as Razia Salehi. Ms Bartool said that the Department had made an error and that Razia Bartool is her cousin’s sister.
Ms Bartool said she came to Australia in June 2007. Mr Khan Salehi asked if Ms Bartool was aware that he had sponsored Razia Bartool to come to Australia. Ms Bartool said that she was, and that the Applicant, Mrs Salehi, and her husband are like her parents. When her own parents passed away, she would never forget the kindness and love they had shown her.
CONSIDERATION
The way that the Parliament couched section 24(3) means that the Minister must not approve an application for citizenship unless the Minister is satisfied of the person’s identity. It is, in effect, a prohibition on the Minister exercising his powers under the Act to confer citizenship unless he can be satisfied regarding this requirement.
The Courts and this Tribunal have frequently considered what is meant by the statutory phrase that a person is “satisfied” of a requirement. Briginshaw v Briginshaw [1938] HCA 34 is the leading authority, and it has been frequently and contemporarily re-stated by that Court (notably in Neat Holdings Pty Limited v Karajan Holdings Pty Limited and Ors [1992] HCA 86, by Toohey J for the Court, at [2]). In Briginshaw, Dixon J (as he then was) said:
The truth is that, when the law requires the proof of any fact, the tribunal must feel an actual persuasion of its occurrence or existence before it can be found. It cannot be found as a result of a mere mechanical comparison of probabilities independently of any belief in its reality. No doubt an opinion that a state of facts exists may be held according to indefinite gradations of certainty; and this has led to attempts to define exactly the certainty required by the law for various purposes. Fortunately, however, at common law no third standard of persuasion was definitely developed. Except upon criminal issues to be proved by the prosecution, it is enough that the affirmative of an allegation is made out to the reasonable satisfaction of the tribunal. But reasonable satisfaction is not a state of mind that is attained or established independently of the nature and consequence of the fact or facts to be proved. The seriousness of an allegation made, the inherent unlikelihood of an occurrence of a given description, or the gravity of the consequences flowing from a particular finding are considerations which must affect the answer to the question whether the issue has been proved to the reasonable satisfaction of the tribunal. In such matters "reasonable satisfaction" should not be produced by inexact proofs, indefinite testimony, or indirect inferences.

Therefore, the Tribunal, standing in the shoes of the Minister, must be actually persuaded to a degree of reasonable satisfaction that a proposition put to it is, in fact, the case – and the degree of its satisfaction may vary according to the consequences that flow from accepting that proposition. In the relevant provisions in the Act, the Parliament has decided that being reasonably satisfied of a potential citizen’s identity is essential, because if citizenship is conferred, a range of significant rights, responsibilities and privileges flow from that conferral.
An Australian citizen is entitled to apply for an Australian passport and travel abroad in the knowledge that he or she has protections under international law and conventions as a citizen of this country and is entitled to seek consular assistance. He or she can vote in public elections and stand for elected office. He or she may be employed in the Australian Public Service and other agencies where citizenship is a requirement. With these rights and responsibilities comes the broad protection of the Australian State. So being satisfied of the identity of a person to be conferred Australian citizenship on a permanent basis assumes a high degree of importance.
In an interview with the Department on 23 March 2017, the Applicant’s husband, Mr, Ishqat Ali Salehi was asked about his Taskera and when he obtained it. Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Salehi said he thought he got it in 1980 or 1982, in Ghanzi, Afghanistan. He said he was living in Afghanistan when he obtained his Taskera. Asked if he and his wife obtained their Taskeras at the same time, Mr Salehi responded “Yes, we got it together”. When asked about the process of obtaining a Taskera, Mr Salehi told the officer:
Okay, so the whole population of 100,000 or 200,000 people are all recorded in the Ghanzi office, and they have the number. And when you – when I showed them my father’s tazkira, they found, you know, their book.
Mr Salehi was asked whether he still had his father’s Taskera and he replied “No, no; I left behind a lot of valuable things”.
This is consistent with the evidence of Mrs Salehi that she went with her husband to obtain her Taskera; but inconsistent with her evidence that they travelled back from where they were living in Pakistan and stayed with acquaintances for a few days, when they obtained it. It is also unexplained how, if Razia Batool was not with her on the day she went to the government offices to obtain her Taskera, Razia Batool’s Taskera has a sequential serial number, indicating they were issued one after the other. Razia Bartool was born in 1989 (ST Documents, p 37) which is either four years after Mrs Salehi obtained her Taskera, as she contends, in 1985; or some seven to nine years after the Applicant’s husband said that he and his wife obtained their Taskeras “in 1980 or 1982”.
The Respondent submitted that if Mrs Salehi’s contention that she obtained her Taskera in 1985 is correct, then it was not obtained in person, because she was not in Afghanistan at that time. If the account given to the Tribunal by the Applicant in her evidence is correct, i.e. that she and her husband travelled back from Pakistan to Afghanistan to obtain Taskeras, that raises a fresh question as to how the Taskeras were obtained at all. As set out above in his March 2017 interview, Mr Salehi said he did not bring his father’s Taskera with him to Pakistan, which Mr Salehi said he provided in order to obtain his and his wife’s Taskeras in 1980 or 1982, or thereabouts. Mrs Salehi’s own Taskera refers to the registration of her husband’s Taskera.
The Tribunal makes some allowances for the fact that evidence is translated, and it accepts Mrs Salehi’s evidence that she is illiterate, and her son’s evidence that she is of riper years and is on certain medication. However, allowing for an element of forgetfulness does not extend to this explaining the fact that the Applicant putting forward completely different accounts of how and when her Taskera was obtained, large parts of which cannot be reconciled.
The Tribunal therefore places little weight on the Taskera presented by Mrs Salehi as proof of her identity.
A person’s life story is also important in the building blocks which allow a decision-maker to be reasonably satisfied of a citizenship applicant’s identity. In her citizenship interview, in March 2017, Mrs Salehi said thatshe and her husband left as “the fighting started”, “one of my son[s] got lost in the fighting” (ST Documents, p 7). It may be assumed she was referring to her oldest son, Mirza, because Mr Salehi, in his own account to the Department, said that after they had no choice but to escape from Afghanistan owing to the fighting, following the collapse of the Taliban regime, “my elder son went to Afghanistan to check the situation, since then I have never heard of him” (ST Documents, p 30). However, Mr Salehi later told an officer that Mirza was living in Melbourne. The Department records show that a Mirza Hussein arrived on the same boat as another son in August 2012; and for four years lived at the same address as the Applicant in a Melbourne suburb.
Mr Khan Salehi acknowledged that there is a Mirza Hussein who is a friend of the family but did not acknowledge that he was a son of the Applicant.
The Respondent submitted that in her citizenship interview (FST Documents, p 25), she had a daughter named Alia, but “we call her Fatima as well, so she has got two names”. Her explanation was that for cultural reasons “when a child is sick you change the name”, which is why the name was changed from Fatima to Alia. The officer then queried that the Applicant’s other son, Iftekhar, had listed Fatima and Alia as separate sisters. The Applicant’s husband also said he had two daughters, Alia and Fatima, and two sons.
Mrs Salehi further said in her interview for citizenship (FST Documents, p 19) that she had five children, she stated she had two boys and was then interrupted by the officer who said “[and] three girls, so five children?”. Mrs Salehi replied, “Yes”. She then was asked to go through the five children in order of age. Mrs Salehi said the oldest was Muzalsan, or Muza, who went missing in Afghanistan aged around 14 or 15. The next oldest is Aliya, who got married and has two daughters. Mrs Salehi said she did not know Aliya’s location, suggesting first maybe Iran, and then Pakistan. Mrs Salehi said the next oldest child was Eftikhar, and then Razia. She said Eftikhar was married and his wife lives in Pakistan. Mrs Salehi said Razia lives in Pakistan and is also married to a Pakistani, and they do not have children. She then said she had a son Khan, but that he was the third oldest of her children.
Mrs Salehi said that after Mirza had gone missing, she was “in a bad situation” and agreed to take in a boy, Abbas, she claimed to have found in a mosque in Afghanistan, because his mother had died.
However, in the email sent by Mr Khan Salehi to the Department on 14 September 2017, he stated (speaking as from his mother) (T4, p 43)
Abbas is adopted son and we adopted him in Pakistan, as mentioned above we arrived in 2001 or 2002 and Abbas was adopted in 2006 or 2007. Due to my age and medication I forget the dates and time. We did not include Abbas in our first application because we thought his family might come and get it [sic] back.
This does not square with Mrs Salehi’s direct evidence to the Department officers that she first met Abbas in a mosque in Afghanistan, and adopted him because his mother had died and also does not explain adequately why she did not include Abbas in her protection visa application in 2006.
In respect of Razia, Mrs Salehi said she was one of her daughters and was married and living in Pakistan. Mrs Salehi’s husband, in his own interview with the Department (FST Documents, p 24) stated that Razia is his niece, his late brother’s daughter, and that she resides in Melbourne.
The Respondent also submitted that Mrs Salehi’s evidence about where she lived when she was in Pakistan is inconsistent. In an affidavit sworn by Mr Shoukat Ali in 2015 (T Documents, p 96), Mr Ali states his address as Alamdar Road in Quetta and that Mrs Salehi was “residing in my above house as tenant from 10 May 2001 and remained up to 19 April 2011”. However, in her citizenship interview in March 2017, Mrs Salehi said she lived at one address on Ali Baht Road in the suburb of Brewery, Quetta; and she said she had not lived on Alamdar Road.
The Tribunal accepts that Afghanistan is an unsettled society, and that there are challenges in obtaining government-issued documents there, particularly if the person requesting the document is no longer resident in the country. However, in this case, not only is the Taskera submitted by the Applicant apparently not a genuine document, the Applicant has given different accounts of how and when she came to obtain it. She has also given inconsistent accounts to the Department and in some of her subsequent evidence and submissions to the Tribunal in relation to the number of children she has, and their location. In one case, there are different accounts as to whether one son is missing in Afghanistan, possibly dead, on the one hand, or living in Melbourne, on the other. The evidence about where Mrs Salehi lived in Pakistan is also inconsistent.
Other identification documents submitted by the Applicant which are issued by Australian authorities do not assist to any great degree in satisfying the requirement for identity where there is an absence of a birth certificate or, as in this case, there are significant doubts about the genuineness of the Afghanistan Government’s primary document issued to its citizens, the Taskera. Where this material is insufficient, as in this case, strong and consistent evidence, which is corroborated, of a life story, may tip the scales towards the decision maker being reasonably satisfied of identification. However, the life story as put by Mrs Salehi, on the most beneficial interpretation allowing for language and literacy barriers and her age, is flawed in fundamental respects, including about a mother’s evidence about her own children. They are flaws that in the Tribunal’s view are fatal in terms of this application. There are simply too many inconsistencies, either in what Mrs Salehi has said, or in what her husband and other members of her family have said about the same family members and events, for the Tribunal to be reasonably satisfied of her identity.
The Tribunal stresses that, in making this finding, it does not conclude that Mrs Salehi is some sort of imposter, nor does it conclude that she is not from Afghanistan, but the Tribunal finds that bare material is not enough to provide a basis for the level of satisfaction of identity necessary under the Act.
I find that the Tribunal, standing in the shoes of the Minister, cannot be satisfied of the identity of Mrs Salehi on the material provided by Mrs Salehi in her application for Australian citizenship. The consequence is, by force of section 24(3), the Minister is prohibited from granting citizenship.
As this threshold requirement has not been met, the application for citizenship must therefore fail.
DECISION
The Tribunal affirms the decision under review.

I certify that the preceding 65 (sixty five) paragraphs are a true copy of the reasons for the decision herein of Senior Member D. J. Morris

……[sgd]……………………………………………
Associate
Dated: 10 December 2020

Date of hearing:

4 September 2019

Advocate for the Applicant:

Mr Khan Salehi

Advocate for the Respondent:

Solicitors for the Respondent:

Mr Jamie Grant

Sparke Helmore

[2020] AATA 4968

10 December 2020

Key Legal Topics

Areas of Law

Immigration

Administrative Law

Statutory Interpretation

Legal Concepts

Judicial Review

Natural Justice

Procedural Fairness

Statutory Construction

Jurisdiction