Federal Court of Australia

Singh v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2026] FCA 1377

ORDERS

THE COURT ORDERS THAT:

1.    The appeal be dismissed.

2.    The appellant pay the first respondent’s costs of the appeal.

The Court Notes that:

Pursuant to the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 1) Act 2024 (Cth), Sch 16, item 10, the Administrative Review Tribunal was substituted for the Administrative Appeals Tribunal as a party to this proceeding with effect from 14 October 2024.

Note:    Entry of orders is dealt with in Rule 39.32 of the Federal Court Rules 2011.

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Ex tempore, revised

WHEELAHAN J:

1    The appellant is a citizen of India. On 13 May 2014, the appellant was granted a Student (Subclass 573) visa. The visa was subject to condition 8202(2)(a) set out in Schedule 8 of the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth) that he be enrolled in a registered course.

2    Under s 116(1)(b) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), the Minister is empowered to cancel a visa if he or she is satisfied that the holder has not complied with a condition of the visa.

3    On 20 October 2016 a delegate of the Minister cancelled the appellant’s student visa on the ground that he had failed to comply with a condition of the visa. The failure to comply arose because the appellant was not enrolled in a registered course of study from 18 September 2015 until 20 September 2016, being the date of the Minister’s written notification to the appellant of an intention to consider cancellation of the visa (the Notice).

4    The appellant sought review of the delegate’s decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. On 28 June 2018, the Tribunal affirmed the delegate’s decision: SINGH (Migration) [2018] AATA 2618 (R).

5    On 11 July 2018, the appellant filed an application in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia seeking judicial review of the Tribunal’s decision in the exercise of that Court’s jurisdiction under s 476 of the Migration Act. On 30 August 2023, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Division 2) dismissed the appellant’s application: Singh v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2023] FedCFamC2G 791. The appellant now appeals that decision to this Court.

The Tribunal’s decision

6    The appellant accepted before the Tribunal that he had not been enrolled in a registered course between 18 September 2015 and the date on which the Notice issued, which was a period of over 12 months. The Tribunal was therefore satisfied that the ground for cancellation in s 116(1)(b) existed. Because cancellation of the appellant’s visa did not engage s 116(3), cancellation was not mandatory. The Tribunal then proceeded to consider whether the discretion to cancel should be exercised.

7    At R [13] the Tribunal summarised in the following terms a submission advanced by the appellant’s representative as to why his visa should not be cancelled –

•    The applicant arrived in Australia in 2014 and he was enrolled in an English course and Diploma of Information Technology leading to a Bachelor of Information Technology;

•    The applicant completed his English course and was attempting his Diploma;

•    In March 2015 the applicant suffered a shoulder and arm injury causing ongoing pain. Consequently, he was not able to attend classes or concentrate on study. In April 2015 the applicant consulted a doctor and informed his education provider of the situation. The applicant was recovering at the time his COE was cancelled in September 2015;

•    The applicant intended to continue his studies in March however in December 2015 he was involved in a car accident, disturbing him mentally and physically. Due to his medical condition he could not study and missed the March enrolment date. On 31 January 2016 and 18 February 2016, the applicant underwent surgery;

•    The applicant’s father underwent surgery in August 2016. His father’s health issues caused him stress and his father’s health was the priority for the entire family;

•    The applicant received [the Notice] in September 2016 and he was not able to inform his family about the situation because of the additional stress that this would cause;

•    The applicant could not gain admission to a Bachelor degree directly due to his English. He enrolled in a Certificate III, IV and Diploma of IT at the Victorian Institute of Culinary Arts and Technology (VICAT), however he was not able to continue his study once his visa was cancelled;

•    The applicant was young when he moved to Australia, it was his first time away from his family and he was in a new country. The applicant is also an introvert and not open to everyone;

•    The submission explained that the main reasons the applicant could not study were his medical condition, which was beyond his control, and his father’s health issues.

8    At R [14], the Tribunal listed a number of documents that were provided to the Tribunal with the appellant’s submissions, and these documents included enrolment records for three different courses commencing 17 October 2016, 19 June 2017, and 18 June 2018. At R [15], the Tribunal stated that it had considered the information in the documents and the information provided to the Tribunal at the hearing.

9    In exercising its discretion to cancel the appellant’s visa, the Tribunal identified a number of matters in the appellant’s favour. However, the Tribunal considered that they were outweighed by the severity of the breach of the visa condition. It gave some weight to the appellant having commenced study on arrival, having completed an English course, and that he had articulated reasons for wanting an Australian qualification. But it did not accept that those matters outweighed the significant breach of the appellant’s visa condition: R [22]. It gave some weight to the appellant’s compliance in other respects, there being nothing to suggest any other breach of conditions and his having been committed to his studies but again found that this did not outweigh the severity of the breach: R [23]. The Tribunal accepted that cancellation would cause the appellant and his family some hardship, given the cost of an Australian education, would cause the loss of the opportunity to complete his qualification in the short to medium term, and had regard to the value attached to Australian qualifications in India, but did not accept that the appellant would be unable to complete IT studies or obtain employment in India, and so found that hardship did not outweigh the breach: R [24]–[25].

10    As to the circumstances in which the breach arose, the Tribunal accepted the appellant’s claim that his father had been unwell and accepted the limited evidence about a shoulder injury that the appellant had sustained and a motor vehicle accident in which he was involved. The Tribunal did not accept as plausible the appellant’s claim that he could not pay fees while his father was unwell because the requirements of a student visa required the appellant to have the money in advance to afford the cost of the visa holder’s stay in Australia: R [46]. The Tribunal gave minimal weight to the appellant’s injury and the motor vehicle accident, neither being supported by evidence explaining an absence of more than twelve months from study. The Tribunal did not accept that those matters had prevented the appellant from attending study for so long a period: R [47]–[49]. The Tribunal acknowledged that the appellant had responded in a timely way to all requests from the Department and the Tribunal and accepted the medical certificate that the appellant had provided as indicating that he had suffered an injury but found the appellant’s account of the cause of his injury to be not convincing and convoluted as a result of inconsistent accounts that he had given. The Tribunal considered that while there were reasons for some absence from study it gave no weight to the reasons in light of the significance of the breach: R [50]. The mandatory legal consequences to the appellant of cancellation attracted only minimal weight because the appellant had not raised concerns about them and because the appellant was not in detention and it appeared unlikely that the appellant would be detained if cancellation occurred: R [51]. There were other sundry matters of a neutral character that the Tribunal considered that are not relevant to the appeal. The Tribunal concluded that, considering the circumstances as a whole, the appellant’s visa should be cancelled: R [55].

The decision of the primary judge

11    A solicitor appeared on behalf of the appellant at the hearing before the primary judge. The solicitor sought an adjournment for four to six weeks on the ground that he had only recently been retained by the appellant. Her Honour refused the adjournment and set out the reasons for the refusal at J [39]–[44]. There is no appeal against the primary judge’s orders on the ground that there was any error in refusing the application for adjournment.

12    The primary judge set out at J [32] the appellant’s grounds of review –

1.    The decision by a delegate of the Minister for Immigration to cancel my Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visa was made under section 116 (General Power) of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act). The major issue was whether the delegate properly exercise his power under s 499 of the Act.

2.    Following section 5 of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (ADJR), the tribunal should take into account relevant consideration in the exercise of his power.

3.    On 06 April 2018, I, Mr Simranjit Singh attended the hearing and explained my genuine intention to study and return back to India.

4.    The tribunal refused my claims and affirm the decision of the Department.

5.    Any decisions of the delegates should be fair and reasonable. I am not satisfied with the decision of the tribunal as it didn’t consider the compelling reason for not being able to enrol in a course. My father and myself has been through several medical conditions which has not been considered by tribunal and I have submitted additional documents of the medical along with this application.

6.    Therefore, the tribunal failed to take into account all relevant circumstances and there is an error of law in the delegate’s decision.

13    The primary judge held that Grounds 1, 3, and 4 did not amount to any jurisdictional error because they merely asserted factual matters and summarised aspects of the background to the proceeding: J [47].

14    The primary judge held that Ground 2 did not disclose any jurisdictional error because the appellant’s reliance on the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (Cth) was misconceived: J [48].

15    The primary judge held that Ground 5 did not disclose any jurisdictional error because the premise of the ground — that the Tribunal did not consider the appellant’s medical circumstances and those of his father — was not established because it was not supported by the Tribunal’s reasons. Her Honour held that the Tribunal summarised the relevant material at R [11]–[14], stated at R [15] that it had been taken into account in the exercise of the discretion, and addressed each element of it at R [44]–[48], accepting that the appellant’s father was unwell and that the appellant had suffered an injury. Her Honour held that the complaint was therefore, in substance, a complaint about the weight given to the material rather than about a failure to consider it, and the weight to be given to evidence was a matter for the Tribunal. As to the further medical documents referred to in Ground 5, the primary judge held that they could not assist the appellant, as they were not before the Tribunal when it made its decision: J [51]–[59].

16    Finally, the primary judge addressed Ground 6 on the basis that it was a conclusion premised on the appellant establishing Grounds 1 to 5 and noted that the appellant had not established those grounds. The primary judge also stated that to the extent that Ground 6 referred to the delegate’s decision, the delegate’s decision was not reviewable by the Court because it was a primary decision within the meaning of s 476(4)(a) of the Migration Act. Otherwise, her Honour could find no error in the Tribunal’s decision.

The appellant’s grounds of appeal to this Court

17    The appellant’s grounds of appeal are general in their terms, and I set them out verbatim –

1.    The Federal Circuit Court failed to find that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal fell in jurisdictional error in determining without a logical and probative basis that all the evidence upon which his claim was based was false.

2.    The Federal Circuit Court failed to find that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal fell in misapprehending the evidence and then use its erroneous findings about the evidence.

18    The Minister submitted that these grounds were not raised before the primary judge and that the appellant requires leave to argue them. There is some force to this submission. However, in this instance judicial efficiency requires that I simply address the merits of the grounds of appeal.

The appellant’s submissions

19    The appellant filed written submissions and made brief oral submissions to the Court on the hearing of the appeal.

20    In response to the Minister’s submission that the appellant’s grounds of appeal raised new matters, the appellant submitted that leave should be granted to argue them. The appellant submitted that they involved questions of law, that no new evidence would be required, that the Minister had identified no prejudice, and that the interests of justice favoured determining the real issues affecting the legality of the Tribunal’s exercise of power. As I have mentioned, I will address the merits of the appellant’s grounds.

21    The appellant accepted that he was not enrolled in a registered course for the relevant period but submitted that this fact established only the ground enlivening the discretion under s 116 of the Migration Act and did not determine how that discretion was to be exercised. The appellant did not challenge the Minister’s submission that the Tribunal had accurately summarised the evidence.

22    The appellant submitted that the Tribunal accepted that he had suffered a shoulder injury, that he had been involved in a motor vehicle accident, that his father had experienced a significant injury, and that he had subsequently re-enrolled in study, yet concluded that those matters carried virtually no weight. The appellant challenged whether the Tribunal’s reasoning process was rationally available to it on the evidence. The appellant submitted that a decision-maker “cannot simultaneously accept significant evidence yet dismiss its explanatory value by speculation or conjecture unsupported by evidence”. The appellant reinforced this submission by claiming that the Tribunal’s critical conclusions rested on findings that lacked a logical and probative foundation. The appellant claimed that there was jurisdictional error because the Tribunal discounted the appellant’s injuries and family hardship using reasoning that was unsupported by any medical or other expert evidence.

23    The appellant submitted that the Tribunal had effectively discounted the appellant’s explanation because one medical certificate referred to him falling from a ladder while oral evidence referred to falling in a shower. The appellant submitted that this discrepancy concerned the mechanism of injury rather than the existence of the injury itself. The appellant submitted that there was no evidentiary basis for concluding that this discrepancy rendered the medical evidence unreliable or incapable of explaining the interruption to the appellant’s studies. The appellant also submitted that the Tribunal had treated the absence of lengthy medical certificates as proof that prolonged educational disruption could not have occurred and submitted that this inference was unsupported by any evidence. The appellant submitted that the Tribunal’s reasoning was legally flawed.

24    The appellant submitted that the primary judge treated several complaints as merely factual disagreements without considering whether the factual findings themselves lacked an evident logical foundation. The appellant did not identify in his submissions to what factual findings he was referring.

25    In oral submissions, the appellant emphasised that he had suffered a shoulder injury and submitted that his father had suffered a hip injury which were causes of his absences and failure to be enrolled in a registered course for the relevant period. The appellant also referred to the fact that he subsequently obtained a certificate of enrolment in a course which, as I have noted at [8] above, was before the Tribunal.

There was no error in the primary judge’s decision

26    The appellant’s submissions recognise that he was entitled to relief only if he established that the Tribunal’s decision was affected by jurisdictional error, being an error which resulted in the Tribunal exceeding the limits of the authority conferred on it by the Migration Act. The categories of jurisdictional error are not closed, and include identifying a wrong issue, asking a wrong question, ignoring relevant material, relying upon irrelevant material, in some cases making an erroneous finding or reaching a mistaken conclusion, and failing to observe an applicable requirement of procedural fairness: Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v SZMTA [2019] HCA 3; 264 CLR 421 at [81] (Nettle and Gordon JJ). To be jurisdictional, the error must also be material, in the sense that the decision that was in fact made could realistically have been different had the error not occurred: LPDT v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs [2024] HCA 12; 280 CLR 321 at [7] (Gageler CJ, Gordon, Edelman, Steward, Gleeson and Jagot JJ). Disagreement with the decision, even emphatic disagreement, does not of itself establish jurisdictional error: Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v Eshetu [1999] HCA 21; 197 CLR 611 at [40] (Gleeson CJ and McHugh J).

27    In considering whether jurisdictional error is disclosed, latitude is to be afforded to the reasons of an administrative decision-maker. How much latitude will be afforded will vary according to the circumstances, but it is axiomatic that the reasons are to be read as a whole, fairly, and not with an eye astute to discern error: Plaintiff M1/2021 v Minister for Home Affairs [2022] HCA 17; 275 CLR 582 at [38]; Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Wu Shan Liang (1996) 185 CLR 259 at 271–272. The Tribunal was not obliged to accept uncritically the claims made by the appellant, and it was for the Tribunal to attribute weight to particular facts in the exercise of the discretion under s 116 to cancel the appellant’s visa.

28    A key theme to the appellant’s submissions on appeal is that the Tribunal’s weighing of the facts that it accepted lacked a logical and probative foundation or was irrational. A challenge to a decision on the ground that the reasons for it were unreasonable, illogical, or irrational must engage with the “usually high” threshold that must be met in order to show that a decision of an administrative character is unreasonable: Minister for Home Affairs v DUA16 [2020] HCA 46; 271 CLR 550 at [26] (Kiefel CJ, Bell, Keane, Gordon and Edelman JJ). The test is not whether the Court would have reasoned differently. As Crennan and Bell JJ explained in Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v SZMDS [2010] HCA 16; 240 CLR 611 (SZMDS) at [131], where probative evidence is capable of giving rise to different processes of reasoning, and logical or rational or reasonable minds might differ as to the conclusions to be drawn from that evidence, a decision cannot be said to be illogical or irrational merely because one conclusion has been preferred to another that was available. A decision will not be illogical or irrational if there is room for a logical or rational person to reach the same decision on the material before the decision-maker: SZMDS at [135]. The correct approach is to ask whether it was open to the Tribunal to engage in the process of reasoning in which it engaged, and to make the findings that it made, on the material before it. The content of that threshold was captured by Steward J in Plaintiff M87/2023 v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2024] HCASJ 42; 426 ALR 587 at [27], where his Honour said that the contention that a finding is unreasonable or irrational is not made out by disagreement with the merits of the finding, even strong disagreement, nor by mistaken reasoning; it requires reasoning or an outcome which does not in any way make sense, and which completely offends logical thinking, and such cases arise only rarely.

29    In the present case, the appellant has not advanced anything more than disagreement with the Tribunal’s weighing process and its appraisal of the quality of the evidence before it.

30    As to the appellant’s submission that the Tribunal had effectively discounted the appellant’s explanation for his absence from study for over one year because one medical certificate referred to him falling from a ladder while oral evidence referred to falling in a shower, the submission is not based on a fair reading of the Tribunal’s statement of reasons. At R [50], the Tribunal noted the discrepancy but was prepared to accept the evidence in the medical certificate that the appellant had suffered an injury and accepted that there were reasons for some absences from school. As to the medical certificate, at R [47] the Tribunal stated that it gave the appellant two weeks off school, but the remainder of the appellant’s absence was not accounted for and that there was insufficient evidence to support the appellant’s significant absence.

31    As to the appellant’s reliance on his father’s injury, the Tribunal considered this claim at R [46] and did not accept it as a plausible reason for the appellant’s failure to be enrolled in a registered course during the relevant period. The appellant has not shown any irrational or illogical process of reasoning in this regard.

32    For the above reasons, the appellant has failed to show that the Tribunal made any jurisdictional error, or that there was any error in the primary judge’s order dismissing his application for judicial review.

Conclusion

33    The appeal will be dismissed with costs.

Associate:

Dated:    17 September 2026