Shah v Minister for Immigration

This matter came before Judge Manousaridis in the Federal Court of Australia. The applicant, Mr Shah, sought judicial review of a decision made by the Minister for Immigration. The core of the dispute concerned whether the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) had committed jurisdictional error by failing to make certain inquiries during its review process.

The legal issue before the court was whether the RRT's failure to make specific inquiries constituted a jurisdictional error. This question required the court to consider the circumstances in which a tribunal's failure to inquire could render its decision "manifestly unreasonable" in the *Wednesbury* sense, and how this principle was affected by High Court authority.

The court's reasoning was guided by the High Court's decision in *Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v SZIAI*. This authority established the governing principles for assessing claims of jurisdictional error arising from a tribunal's failure to inquire. The court noted that while earlier Federal Court decisions, influenced by *Prasad*, had permitted findings of jurisdictional error in rare or exceptional circumstances where a failure to inquire led to a manifestly unreasonable decision, *SZIAI* had set the boundaries for such considerations. In *SZIAI*, the High Court considered a situation where the RRT had failed to make inquiries by calling two telephone numbers on a document it deemed fake, despite having undertaken another inquiry to assess its authenticity. The Federal Court in *SZIAI* had found this failure to be an unreasonable jurisdictional error, particularly because the RRT had already embarked on an inquiry and was presented with diametrically opposed evidence. However, the High Court's decision in *SZIAI* now governs the approach to such claims.