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This post analyses a second tranche of data obtained by the Kaldor Centre Data Lab via Freedom of Information requests, covering protection visa cases at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) from 18 May 2020 to 18 May 2022.

Between 18 May 2020 and 18 May 2022, 7,632 protection visa decisions were made by the AAT. Asylum seekers were successful in nine per cent of these cases, a decrease of five per cent from the previous 2015-2020 period.

A change in the composition of people applying for protection

This decrease in acceptance rates may in part be explained by applicants’ countries of origin. From 2015-20, Chinese and Malaysian applicants made up 50 per cent of cases decided by the AAT and had an average success rate of 4.2 per cent. In 2020-22, this figure rose to 60 per cent, while the success rate for these applicants dropped to 2.7 per cent. 

The last two years (2020-2022) also saw a significant increase in applicants from Thailand, which rose from 0.4 per cent of the 2015-20 applicants, to 13.4 per cent in 2020-22. The acceptance rate for Thai applicants also dropped from 6.7 per cent to 0.1 per cent between these two periods; of the 1,021 Thai applicants in 2020-22, only one was granted a visa.

 Overall, an applicant’s chance of success varied from zero to 88 per cent, depending on their country of origin (for countries with more than 20 applicants). 

Growing disparity in outcomes between those who can access representation, and those who cannot

In this period, applicants who were represented by a lawyer or migration agent were nine times more likely to succeed than those without representation (8.9, 95% CI [6.79, 11.69]), controlling for all other variables (including the country of origin of the applicant, the individual decision-maker, their gender and date of appointment, and the political party that appointed the decision-maker). This was a significant increase from the previous period, in which the effect of having legal representation was half as large.

An increase in consistency, but lower success rates for applicants

This 2020-2022 period also saw a significant decrease in the variation between decision-makers, whose acceptance rates ranged from zero to 26 per cent, compared with a range of zero to 89 per cent in the previous period (for decision-makers who decided over 50 cases). The standard deviation in individual tribunal members’ acceptance rates between the two data sets halved over this period (from 13 in 2015-2020, to 6.5 in 2020-2022). 

Therefore, while tribunal members were granting fewer visas, they were doing so more consistently. Fourteen decision-makers rejected applications in over 95 per cent of their cases. Four of these decision-makers rejected every application they heard.

Ongoing issues relating to the politicisation of the appointment and re-appointment process of members

While applicants in the previous period were 44 per cent more likely to succeed when appearing before AAT members first appointed by a Labor government, in 2020-22 an applicant’s odds of success were 51 per cent lower when they appeared before AAT members first appointed by a Labor government, compared to Coalition-appointed members (95% CI [0.325, 0.740]), controlling for all other variables (including the country of origin of the applicant, whether they had legal representation, the individual decision-maker, their gender and date of appointment).

This change may in part be explained by the politicised nature of the re-appointment process. During the 2015-20 period, 40 per cent of tribunal members who made protection visa decisions were first appointed by the ALP. However, in the 2020-22 period, only 14 per cent of tribunal members were first appointed by the ALP. It appears that many of the ALP appointed members that high success rates in terms of finding in favour of protection visa applicants were not re-appointed.

Of the 20 decision-makers (who heard more than 50 cases) with the highest acceptance rates in 2015-20, 80 per cent (n=16) did not have their appointments subsequently renewed. Eighty-eight per cent (n=14) of these decision-makers were first appointed by the ALP. 

In comparison, of the 20 decision-makers with lowest acceptance rates, 30 per cent (n=6) were first appointed by the ALP and 30 per cent (n=6) did not have their appointments renewed.