Helen Irving

Alexander v Minister for Home Affairs [2022] HCA 19 (Alexander), handed down by the High Court on 8 June this year, involved a challenge to section 36B of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (as amended in 2020) (the Citizenship Act), which purported to empower the Minister to strip citizenship from an Australian dual national who, ‘by their conduct, demonstrates that the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia’ and if the Minister is satisfied that ‘it would be contrary to the public interest for the person to remain an Australian citizen.’ The revocation of citizenship, the Court concluded, was punitive. Punishment for unlawful conduct, as it held in Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs [1992], is a judicial function, made exclusive to the federal courts under Chapter III of the Constitution. Citizenship revocation, imposed by the executive, therefore breaches the constitutional separation of powers. Section 36B was accordingly invalid, and Mr Alexander, an Australian-Turkish dual national whose citizenship had been revoked after he travelled to Syria (and following an adverse ASIO report), remained an Australian citizen.

Chris Honnery

‘A sentence of death.’ The title of Edelman J’s dissenting judgment in Plaintiff M1/2021 v Minister for Home Affairs (M1) captures the stakes of visa cancellation matters in which a former visa holder claims to face serious harm in their country of origin.

In M1, the High Court addressed whether a decision maker is required to consider claims that raise a potential breach of Australia's international nonrefoulement obligations when determining if there is ‘another reason’ to revoke a mandatory visa cancellation under s 501CA of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (the Act). By majority, the High Court held that it is permissible to ‘defer’ consideration of non-refoulement claims raised in a request to revoke a visa cancellation on the basis that these claims will be assessed in a protection visa application.

Isolde Daniell

The Migration and Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Information Provisions) Bill 2020 (Cth) (the Bill) was introduced to the Commonwealth House of Representatives on 10 December 2020. It has since been considered by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, and …