Administrative Appeals Tribunal accused of being a secretive star chamber

A serious criminal record is not necessarily a bar to being given Australian citizenship.

Under the headline “Star chambers must not decide who enters Australia”, The Australian’s main editorial yesterday:

In overturning a decision by the Immigration Department, on delegation from Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton, to refuse a visa for a Palestinian man once jailed for conspiracy to cause intentional death and belonging to a terrorist organisation, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has shown itself a poor arbiter of immigration matters. The applicant, a 30-year-old man from the West Bank in the Palestinian Territories, had “serious convictions” and had lied about them on his visa application.

If this sounds familiar, you’re correct: The Australian, September 12:

Peter Dutton has argued it is in the national interest he obtain a “ministerial veto” to block citizenship for ­people found not to be of “good character” after a child rapist, drug dealers and a convicted killer won citizenship status in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. But with the government’s citizenship bill blocked in the Senate, Mr Dutton has ­accused Labor and the Senate crossbench of standing in the way of what he says are much-needed changes to allow a veto over AAT decisions.

Dutton cites a 1996 case in which the AAT overturned a ministerial decision not to grant citizenship to a convicted child rapist on the grounds he should be considered of “good character”:

A cocaine dealer convicted of trying to import 3.387kg of cocaine was also found to be of good character by the AAT and granted citizenship. In 1993, Iranian Hassan Baharestan was convicted of manslaughter in Western Australia for killing Church of Christ minister Douglas Good. In 2011 the AAT ruled he should be entitled to Australian citizenship.

Even the ABC realises there is a story here, September 11:

Serious questions are being asked about the way refugee cases are considered after a tribunal was found to have adopted a “cut-and-paste” approach to its rulings. The case will now be sent back to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for reconsideration. An Afghan Hazara asylum-seeker who took his case to the Federal Court has exposed the practice, which lawyers discovered had occurred on several occasions.

No matter is too trivial for this tribunal. Ceduna’s West Coast Sentinel reports the case of public servant James Dalgleish. Dissatisfied with Com­care’s decision to stop paying for his running shoes he took his case to the AAT, September 8:

Mr Dalgleish took the case to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in August. A former public servant who was hit by a car on his way to work 31 years ago has won a legal bid forcing the government to pay for his cushioned running shoes.

Melbourne’s Herald Sun reports the AAT is hiding from scrutiny by publishing only a tiny number of the thousands of visa decisions it makes, September 8:

It has refused to answer questions from the Herald Sun about how many of its decisions are made public. But AAT registrar Sian Leathem had to admit under questioning at a recent Senate hearing that a whopping 87.5 per cent of its decisions on visas were not published last year. “There were 2009 decisions that were published — which is 12.5 per cent of all their written decisions,” she told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee. Ms Leathem also admitted protection visa decisions relating to Iranians always remained secret.