Nsw Appelate Tribunal Observation

Administrative Appeals Tribunal

The relevant parties involved in the hearing.

The Applicant – Mr. J. Surjanto

The Respondent – DLA Piper (law firm) representing The Aust. Immigration Dept.

Were the parties legally represented or not?

The applicant was self-represented. The respondent was legally represented by the law firm DLA Piper.

How did the magistrate or judge interact and conduct the proceedings? What was the nature of the legal matter being heard?

The magistrate (The AAT Senior Member) clearly explained how the hearing was going to be conducted. The magistrate interacted with both applicant and legal representative of the respondent in an equal manner. The session, being an Appellate tribunal, give a lot of leeway for the applicants, majority of whom are self represented, to ask questions whenever they require explanation regarding some terms that they don’t understand. The magistrate encouraged the applicant to raise a question whenever he was not certain regarding the meaning of a word in any given time during the tribunal hearing.

The magistrate made it clear what stage of the hearing it is to both the applicant and the respondent’s representative, and also made sure whose turn it was for the applicant or respondent’s representative to speak and present their part of the case.

Some of the examples that the magistrate conducted the hearing was shown by how she made sure that both parties has the copy of all documents consisting of the evidences from both side, and ensuring that opportunity was given to both the applicants and the respondent’s representative to clarify any statements they made in the evidence file they submitted.

The hearing itself was conducted via tele-conference, as it took place in Shanghai, China and Sydney, Australia.

The legal matter being heard was an appeal against a decision that had been made by a minister for the Department of Immigration to deny the applicant ‘s citizenship application that requires a ministerial discretion based on spousal discretion.

The applicant’s citizenship was rejected on the ground that the minister didn’t believe that he maintained a close and continuing relationship with Australia during the period that he was absent from Australia. Because of that, the Minister refused to apply the time that the applicant was away from Australia with his Australian spouse to be calculated as time spent in Australia to fulfil the residency requirement for Citizenship application.

How was the evidence given to the court?

The evidence was given through written documentation and verbal communication. All written documents were provided to the parties prior to the hearing, so that both parties can prepare against it. Both the applicant and the respondent’s legal representative were given chance by the magistrate to state if they want to change their view on the case after receiving the evidence presented to them.

The applicant provided 40 pages of evidences to support his claim that he has maintained close and continuing relationship with Australia during the time he was away from Australia. The time in question being the period he worked in China.

The evidence prepared consists of :

1. Several letters of support by Australian friends and family of the applicant, claiming that they have continuing relationship with the applicant during the period that he was absence from Australia.

2. Bank statements to support his claim that he maintained an active bank account in Australia

3. Letter of participation with an event from local council.

4. Photos of the visits made by applicant’s parents in law and brother in law during his time in China

The bundle containing this evidence had been presented to the tribunal and the respondent