In ALT18 v Minister for Immigration, decided 28 September 2026, the Federal Court dismissed an appeal by a Fijian applicant who argued that domestic-violence trauma rendered inconsistencies in her evidence legally irrelevant. Justice Shariff held that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s adverse credibility findings were open on the material and not ‘legally unreasonable’. The Court also refused to take judicial notice of eight general propositions on domestic-violence dynamics, stating that detailed behavioural assumptions cannot be shoe-horned into s 144 of the Evidence Act without an authoritative source. Practitioners say the judgment underscores the high bar for overturning protection-visa refusals on credibility grounds. For corporate mobility teams the case is a reminder that employees or family members seeking protection visas must present consistent, well-corroborated narratives; trauma-informed arguments will not rescue fundamentally weak claims. The ruling may also influence how the Department trains case officers to weigh trauma in future assessments.
Source: Case Law Wire
