The Court held that when exercising the personal power under s 501(3) of the Migration Act, the Minister has no obligation to consider the most up-to-date material in the department's possession, including unsolicited or solicited submissions from the visa holder or material filed in related Tribunal proceedings. On the 'unwarranted assumption' ground, the Court distinguished between an impermissible assumption that past OMCG associations continued to the present and a permissible inference that past associations gave rise to a risk of future resumption; on the facts, the Minister's reasoning was characterised as the latter, involving contingent future risk rather than a finding of current association. The Court noted that the unwarranted assumption doctrine developed in the s 501BA(2) context (where a Tribunal 'original decision' provides a natural baseline) translates less readily to s 501(3) decisions drawing on disparate materials spanning multiple years.
The full text is available to signed-in members.