This article critiques ministerial ‘national interest’ decisions under Pt 9 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (‘the Migration Act ’) that exclude natural justice and may rest on stale material. It identifies resulting jurisdictional error risks and proposes tightly scoped reforms – a statutory contemporaneity duty with presumptive freshness windows, engagement with supervening updates, an annexed Currency Schedule, and a brief confirm-or-lapse mechanism – to ensure present tense, probative decision-making.
Jason Donnelly (Wed,) studied this question.