Migration Act s 357A — Exhaustive statement of natural justice
Text of provision
Refer to the current compilation of the Migration Act 1958 on the Federal Register of Legislation for verbatim text.
Plain English
Section 357A provides that Division 5 of Part 5 of the Migration Act is an exhaustive statement of the requirements of the natural justice hearing rule in relation to matters the Migration Review Tribunal (MRT) deals with. In other words, the common law natural justice hearing rule does not apply to MRT proceedings — the only procedural fairness obligations the Tribunal has are those specifically set out in Division 5.
This provision was introduced to give certainty to the scope of procedural fairness in tribunal proceedings and to prevent applicants from arguing that the Tribunal was obliged to provide procedural fairness beyond what the legislation specifies.
Note: The MRT and the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) were merged into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) in 2015, and the AAT was itself replaced by the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) in October 2024. The effect of s 357A has been absorbed into the ART's governing legislation.
Practical effect
The practical effect of s 357A was that applicants before the MRT could not rely on general common law natural justice arguments to require the tribunal to provide additional procedural protections beyond those in the Act. The High Court confirmed in SAAP v Minister for Immigration (2005) 228 CLR 294 that the exhaustive statement provisions did limit the scope of natural justice obligations in the tribunals, but that a failure to comply with the statutory procedural requirements themselves constituted jurisdictional error.
Under the current ART regime, the procedural fairness framework is similarly codified, though the specific provisions differ from the old Part 5 Division 5 structure.