[25] Surprisingly little judicial attention has been devoted to the concept of an “integer” of a claim, as that phrase was coined in Htun. That may explain why in 2013 Robertson J in SZRKT took the view that the authorities illuminated no clear distinction between “claims” on the one hand and “mere” items of evidence on the other. The phrase “integer” seems to have been used interchangeably with “component of claim” (Htun) yet in Tran v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Kiefel, RD Nicholson and Downes JJ) the opportunity for exposition was not taken up as the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia merely stated that the tribunal was “required to deal with all integers of an applicant’s claim”, without providing elucidation about what an integer was. His Honour Judge Manousaridis has held that an “integer” may be taken to be the equivalent of a material question of fact. His Honour so held in SZURJ v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection that an integer was a meaningful subset of material questions of fact, which, in combination with other meaningful subsets of material questions of fact, ought to lead the Tribunal to conclude in a particular way. In my respectful view, his Honour’s consideration of the subject is accurate. It appears to be one of the only statements of principle on point. The sheer volume of decided migration cases in the federal jurisdiction over the last 10 years has overtaken observations in learned writings of the early millennium of which an example is Caron Beaton-Wells, ‘Judicial Review of Migration Decisions: Life After S157’. So far as my research has uncovered, the consideration given to the subject of integers by his Honour Judge Manousaridis is the best and only treatment on the point.
MZANX v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & BORDER PROTECTION BC201608646