Singh v Minister for Immigration

In the Federal Circuit Court of Australia at Perth, Navraj Singh (the applicant) sought the reinstatement of an application that had been dismissed for non-appearance. The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs (the first respondent) opposed the application, arguing that the substantive application had no prospect of success. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal was the second respondent.

The court was required to determine whether to grant the applicant's request to reinstate his dismissed application. This involved considering the principles for setting aside orders for non-appearance and assessing whether the applicant had a reasonably arguable prospect of success in the underlying judicial review application. The court also had to consider whether, even if other factors favoured reinstatement, it would be in the interests of the administration of justice to do so given the lack of prospects of success.

The court reasoned that a key consideration for reinstatement is whether the applicant has a reasonably arguable prospect of success in the substantive application. In this case, the applicant's visa had been refused because his employer's nomination was refused, and the employer had not sought review of that refusal within the statutory time limits. The court found that even if the applicant's judicial review application raised arguable grounds concerning jurisdictional error by the Tribunal, the fundamental issue was that the applicant could not meet a mandatory criterion of the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth). Therefore, any remittal of the matter would be futile, as the visa would inevitably be refused. The applicant conceded that his substantive application had no reasonable prospect of success.

Consequently, the court dismissed the application for reinstatement. The applicant was ordered to pay the first respondent's costs fixed at $305.