SZTKE v Minister for Immigration

The applicant, SZTKE, sought judicial review of a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) which affirmed the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection's refusal to grant him a Protection visa. The applicant contended that the AAT failed to ask itself the correct questions and denied him procedural fairness. The matter was heard by Dowdy J in the Federal Court of Australia.

The central legal issues before the court were whether the AAT had committed jurisdictional error by failing to rationally deal with the evidence presented, specifically the testimony of a witness named Mr L. P., and whether this failure amounted to a denial of procedural fairness. The applicant argued that the AAT's finding that Mr L. P.'s evidence was unreliable, based on a single encounter with the applicant in a group, was irrational and illogical.

Dowdy J dismissed the application for judicial review. The court found that the AAT had rationally considered the evidence of Mr L. P., noting that the witness's oral evidence to the Tribunal had qualified his earlier written statement, reducing the claimed contact with the applicant to a single instance in a group of ten. Applying principles from *MZZGE v Minister for Home Affairs* [2019] FCAFC 72, the court determined that the AAT's assessment of the witness's reliability was a matter for the Tribunal and did not constitute a failure to ask the correct questions or a lack of rational connection between evidence and inference. Consequently, no jurisdictional error or procedural unfairness was established.