Advice Regarding Ministerial Direction 99 To Character Decision Makers Following NZYQ And Love/thoms​ ​​ ​ ​​

Written by Claude Haiku 4.5 from the extracted text on 28 Feb 2026. It can miss or misread redacted and scanned pages. Check the source before relying on it.

This document provides Home Affairs legal analysis of the High Court's Love; Thoms v The Commonwealth decision and its implications for ministerial direction to character decision makers. The analysis extracts key majority judgments establishing that Aboriginal Australians, as defined by the tripartite Mabo test, are not "aliens" under s 51(xix) of the Constitution and therefore fall outside the reach of Migration Act provisions enabling detention and removal of unlawful non-citizens (ss 189, 198). The court held that Aboriginal Australians' constitutional status derives from their connection to Australia, such that even those without registered birth certificates or Australian citizenship documentation cannot be subjected to deportation under aliens power legislation. The document synthesizes reasoning from Justices Nettle, Gordon, and Bell to clarify the character assessment implications of this ruling for Home Affairs decision makers.