Majority of judges find that bureaucrats cannot decide whether the minister should consider intervening, as department policy dictates
Hundreds of visa decisions have been thrown into question by a high court ruling that the government cannot “circumvent” the law by setting policies limiting which cases will be considered by the minister.of two appellants who were unable to have their visa refusals overturned due to a home affairs department policy stating the immigration minister would not consider personal intervention unless the department believed that there were “unique or exceptional circumstances”.
In May 2019 an assistant director in the department advised Davis his case lacked “unique or exceptional circumstances” so his application for intervention was finalised without being referred to the minister. He noted the appellants were just “two of the hundreds of cases” in which a delegate of the minister refused a visa, after an administrative tribunal upheld the decision, and the applicants then went to the minister for help.
This change made the department the arbiter of whether applications fell into categories such as “compassionate circumstances” or “exceptional benefit”, he said.
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