The case of Toki v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2022] FCAFC 164 serves as a strong reminder of the importance of having corroborative evidence in an application to revoke a character based cancellation.
Toki had an extensive criminal history, including murder of his de facto wife. The Minister personally decided not to revoke the visa cancellation. Toki appealed to the Federal Court arguing that the Minister’s finding that he had no evidence of family support was legally unreasonable. This was because the Minister had access to Toki’s monthly progress reports, one of which mentioned ‘on going regular contact with family, including having an AVL with his sister and her family’.
The Federal Court and the Full Court rejected the appeal, Justices Markovic, Goodman and Raper held that:
- the Minister is not required to refer to every piece of evidence in his reasoning and the submission of the monthly progress report should not be deemed a mandatory consideration; and
- a single dot point in one monthly progress report is of limited value and is of markedly different quality to providing the Minister of corroborative evidence.
The motto of the story is proper preparation. Toki should have provided the Minister with statements and physical representations by family members to corroborate his claim of ongoing family support.
Creative commons acknowledgment for the photograph.
