Mr Habib's Passport

One of the reasons why you may be refused an application for an Australian passport (even if you are a citizen) is because a competent authority suspects on reasonable grounds that you would be likely to engage in conduct that might prejudice the security of Australia or a foreign country.

The Full Federal Court has recently refused to overturn the decision not to grant a passport to Mamdouh Habib. Mr Habib was one of two Australians who spent a considerable time in detention at Guantanamo Bay. ASIO (the Australian security service) conducted a security assessment and provided a list of reasons why Mr Habib remained a security risk. Mr Habib (and his wife) didn't help their own case by not being truthful in their first hearing in the AAT, with the court finding that:

"These untruths make us wary of Mr and Mrs Habib’s uncorroborated evidence. We consider that where their evidence conflicts with that of the respondents and there is no other evidence to support their version of events, we must prefer the evidence of the respondents."

Having found that he was lying there were two issues for the Court: firstly whether there was an obligation to disclose to Mr Habib that this finding was being used against him; and secondly having found the obligation existed, whether it was satisfied in the circumstances. The answer to both was "yes" and Mr Habib is without a passport. I can't help wondering why he didn't just argue that his past conduct was not indicative of his future conduct rather than being in denial.

Habib v Director-General of Security [2009] FCAFC 48 (24 April 2009)