The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs has the ability under the Migration Act 1958 to personally intervene in your case if the Minister reasonably believes it is in the public interest to do so which usually means the Minister will grant you (and if applicable your family members) a visa.
Ministerial Intervention provides certain persons whose visa applications have been refused and who were unsuccessful at the review tribunals an opportunity to request that the Minister personally intervene and either grant the visa or make a more favourable decision than the initial refusal.
Kindly note that the Minister is not legally obliged to intervene in your visa applications as there only a small number of applications are successful.
If you are in detention, you do not have to wait until your matter is considered by a Tribunal before asking the Minister to consider your case by way of Ministerial Review. There are limited guidelines available on the matters the Minister will take into account. A Ministerial Review is most likely to be successful on compassionate and/or humanitarian grounds or because there are exceptional circumstances.
Some guidelines that the Minister may consider while looking at your application
The minister may consider the following cases:
- Strong compassionate and circumstances that if not recognised would result in serious, ongoing and irreversible harm and continuing hardship to an Australian citizen or an Australian family unit, where at least one member of the family
- Compassionate circumstances regarding your age and/or health and/or psychological state, that if not recognised would result in serious, ongoing and irreversible harm and continuing hardship.
- Exceptional economic, scientific, cultural or other benefit that would result from you being permitted to remain in Australia.
- Circumstances not anticipated by relevant legislation; or clearly unintended consequences of legislation; or the application of relevant legislation leads to unfair or unreasonable results in your case.
- You cannot be returned to your country/countries of citizenship or usual residence due to circumstances outside your control.
The Ministerโs power are not available in the following circumstances:
- there is no review decision by a merits review tribunal
- a Minister has already intervened to grant a visa
- a tribunal has found that it does not have jurisdiction to review a decision
- a tribunal has found that the review application was made outside the time limits
- a tribunal has returned your case to the Department for further consideration and one of our decision-makers has made a subsequent decision on your case.
Contact us immediately if you are interested in exploring your options for Ministerial Intervention. Even if your case is still awaiting tribunal review, we can advise you of your options, your time limits, and how we can create and file your request for Ministerial Intervention should you choose to take advantage of this option should your tribunal review be unsuccessful.
