Lawyers would be entitled to feel peeved should they win a case for their client, yet the judge fails to award costs – throwing out the window the usual rule of costs following the event.
So it was for Sydney migration lawyer Simon Jeans, who persuaded Justice Darryl Rangiah of the Federal Court to overturn Judge “Biggles” Egan.
Biggles had dismissed an application for judicial review of an AAT decision relating to an application for a student visa made by Amandeep Kaur and two other citizens from India.
The tribunal decided that Ms Kaur did not genuinely plan to stay in Australia “temporarily”.
She arrived here on a visitor’s visa and then applied for a student visa. The tribunal regarded the onshore application to study with great suspicion, with the minister using it as “adverse information”.
Rangiah cut to the chase:
“There was no evidence before [the AAT] that the student visa program was being used to circumvent the intentions of the migration programme. The circular reasoning is illogical, and the finding was unreasonable because it was based on no evidence.”
The AAT misconstrued the word “temporarily” – it regarded Ms Kaur’s change of plans as an intention to stay permanently or indefinitely in Australia.
This ignored the fact that the Student (Temporary) Class TU visa allowed the appellants to stay in the country for a specified period – as the name of the visa indicated.
This could not be evidence of an intention to stay permanently.
So far so good. The bad news is that migration guru Simon Jeans was denied his costs. Rangiah thought that the argument that got up was only the “kernel” of the ground that proved successful, it was not developed, and further submissions had to be requested after the hearing”.
The judge regarded other grounds taken by the appellants as “unmeritorious”.
He sought reinforcement from Justice John Logan in Kumar v Minister for Rejections and Turnbacks, who said:
“Much, perhaps too much, judicial time has been spent in judicial review and in the exercise of appellate jurisdiction in respect of merits-based evaluations as to whether a particular person is a ‘genuine’ student. I cannot help but think that this is in no small part due to a failure on the part of the profession to appreciate the nature of the evaluative criterion mentioned, the limits in relation thereto of judicial review, an overly narrow reading of the Minister’s directions and an uncritical assimilation of them with subordinate legislation prescribing criteria relevant for the purpose of the making of a quite different administrative decision.”
At least, on this occasion, we avoided Logan’s treatise on the regicide of Charles I, the military dictatorship of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the danger of anarchy following Cromwell’s death, the restoration of Charles II and his unlimited power to raise a standing army, and the arrival of William & Mary.
Justice Rangiah’s decision not to order costs may act as a disincentive for lawyers who have their “shoulders to the grindstone” for the oppressed and penniless.
On earlier occasions, HH hailed himself as a champion of the marginalised. At a social justice gala in 2017 for the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service, he mentioned the “power and beauty of the law to profoundly affect people’s lives”.
Last December at a Pride in Law jamboree, he told his own story about leaving South Africa and realising that “if I wanted to do something about injustice, I needed to become a lawyer”.
Presumably, he didn’t imagine the power and beauty would be delivered for free.
The tribunal decision was in 2021, the Circuitous Court decision by Biggles was in 2023, and here was Rangiah depriving the lawyer of his Christmas pudding on December 22, 2025.
Simon Jeans described it on LinkedIn as a “begrudging win”.
Kaur v Minister for Immigration, Etc …
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Dedicated readers will remember our report on the tirade delivered in the AAT by Rebecca Bellamy.
In the Leo’o Ola case, she accused well-credentialed migration lawyers of making money out of undeserving non-citizens who are “desperate to avoid deportation”.
These lawyers would have more “integrity” if they advised these clients to “keep their money”.
“Mr Leo’o Olo did not benefit from the efforts of his lawyers and lay witnesses to manipulate the Tribunal. The Tribunal is concerned with credible evidence and reasonable inferences. It is not persuaded by lies, speculation or exaggeration. Mr Leo’o Olo is going back to his country of origin. It is not a country that is poor, unstable, war-torn, barbaric or oppressive. It is New Zealand.”
There has been a judicial review application, the results of which came down this month – from Darryl Rangiah.
In this instance, the lawyers were allowed to have their costs – even though he had some sympathy for Bellamy’s frustration.
The appeal judge was not moved by the 10 instances of negative body language by the senior member, captured on video – the smirks, the rolling of her eyes and questioning witnesses in a manner that was “objectively rude, insensitive, and/or dismissive”. See application for review.
Nonetheless, HH went for it:
“The Tribunal’s hostile tirade against the applicant’s lawyers was of the gravest kind, attacking their honesty and integrity as lawyers. The Tribunal plainly took the view that the witnesses were not ‘proofed properly’ by the lawyers with the consequence that there was “contrived or deficient evidence”. The Tribunal indicated that the lawyers did not “present an honest case”. In my opinion, a fair-minded reader of the Tribunal’s reasons might reasonably apprehend that the Tribunal visited its animosity towards the applicant’s lawyers over their preparation and presentation of the case upon the applicant. In other words, a fair-minded reader might reasonably apprehend that the Tribunal may well have failed to bring an open mind to the evidence of the applicant and his witnesses and the merits of his lawyers’ submissions.”