SZJHR & Ors v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

[2008] HCASL 387

SZJHR & ORS
v
MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR
[2008] HCASL 387
S42/2008

1. The applicants, who are husband, wife and two children, are citizens of Bangladesh.  They arrived in Australia on 29 January 2006.  On 23 March 2006, a delegate of the first respondent refused their applications for Protection (Class XA) visas.  The first applicant claimed to fear persecution on political grounds.  The second, third and fourth applicants relied on their membership of the first applicant's family.  The decision of the delegate was, on 8 August 2006, affirmed by the Refugee Review Tribunal.  The decision of the Tribunal turned upon an extensive examination of the factual basis of the first applicant's claim.  Because of evidentiary inconsistencies, doubts as to the credibility of certain witnesses, and aspects of the first applicant's travel history, the Tribunal was not satisfied of his claim to have suffered harm or to have a well founded fear of persecution.

2. On 14 August 2007, the Federal Magistrates Court (Nicholls FM) dismissed an application for judicial review of the Tribunal's decision:  the Court found no substance in four complaints of jurisdictional error. 

3. An appeal to the Federal Court of Australia (Lander J) was dismissed on 4 December 2007.  The applicants complained of the Tribunal's failure to contact certain witnesses as requested.  Lander J found that the second respondent gave appropriate consideration to the first applicant's request that evidence be obtained from two witnesses in Bangladesh, whose telephone numbers he provided to the second respondent.  His Honour found, correctly, that, having considered the request and taken into account relevant considerations, the second respondent was not obliged to obtain the evidence sought, and that the Tribunal had reasonable grounds for not pursuing the request.  Lander J also rejected a ground of appeal alleging jurisdictional error based on the inclusion, in the second respondent's s 424A letter to the applicants, of information the first applicant said was incorrect.

4. Nothing in the arguments filed in support of the applicant's application for special leave to appeal to this Court shows any error in the reasoning of Lander J.  An appeal has no prospects of success.

5. The application to this Court is brought out of time and the applicant seeks an order under r 41.02.2 dispensing with the requirement to comply with the time limit in r 41.02.1.  We would not make this order, for the reason that there is insufficient substantial merit in the substantive application.

6. The application is dismissed.

7. Pursuant to r 41.10.5 we direct the Registrar to draw up, sign and seal an order dismissing the application.

A.M. Gleeson
16 July 2008 J.D. Heydon