MENTERI DALAM NEGERI

On the court record

The Minister of Home Affairs, litigating preventive detention, deportation and citizenship at the intersection of executive power over the person and the constitutional limits the courts impose, including on ouster clauses and the right to travel.

Menteri Dalam Negeri (the Minister of Home Affairs) appears in the corpus as a respondent or defendant in constitutional, administrative and civil-liberties litigation — preventive detention and rehabilitation, immigration and deportation, citizenship, and claims arising from the exercise of coercive powers. The matters run through the High Court and Federal Court.

Preventive detention and rehabilitation feature prominently. In a Malay-language habeas corpus matter the question was whether the absence of a start and end date for rehabilitation on the prescribed form was fatal to the detention, and whether the Drug Dependants (Treatment and Rehabilitation) legislation, as amended, applied to action commenced before the amendment took effect. Immigration decisions were also challenged: in a leave application for judicial review, a foreign student whose visa had expired and who had participated in a repatriation programme and been deported alleged that a lifetime ban had been imposed, raising whether the threshold for leave was satisfied.

Citizenship and the state's liability for coercive powers complete the picture. One matter raised whether there was a fatal misalignment between the challenged decision and the reliefs sought, whether there was an arguable case under Article 14(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution, and whether there had been a circumvention of Article 15A and an abuse of the judicial-review process. In a civil claim, individuals sued police officers, a hospital and the Federal Government over incidents in which a person was twice apprehended under section 11 of the Mental Health Act 2001 and subjected to non-consensual medical tests on a parental complaint, without independent basis. At the Federal Court a matter engaged ouster clauses, judicial power, the right to travel and fundamental liberties under constitutional supremacy. The Minister's footprint sits at the sensitive intersection of executive power over the person — detention, deportation and citizenship — and the constitutional and common-law limits the courts place upon it.