Working Around AAT Filing Deadline: Caution Needed!

The deadline for filing an application for merits review has long been the bane of applicants’, and migration agents’ existence, hasn’t it?
It has long been considered “settled law” that the filing deadline is absolutely rigid and inflexible, and cannot be extended no matter how compelling the circumstances may be, or however good the explanation may be for the applicant’s failure to file the application for merits review “on time”.
That is why there was at least temporary cause for excitement, optimism and possibility when a decision was handed down in November 2018 by Justice Greenwood of the Federal Court, in the case of Brown v Minister for Home Affairs (No. 2) (2018) FCA 1787 that the filing deadline was not, in fact, inflexible and that it could indeed be extended.
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