The Immigration Department allows people with no training in the area to make decisions about the legitimacy of people's claims to be fleeing torture, a court heard yesterday.
The claim came on the first day of a Court of First Instance review into the government's system for assessing claims for asylum made under the UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Nigel Kat, for the applicants, said the department had offered a two-day course in assessing such claims in September 2004, but none of the 13 people who attended were involved in making the decisions to return people to their countries of origin that lay at the heart of the six test cases under review.
'We don't even know if the people who did go read the supporting materials because no one was ever tested,' Mr Kat said. 'They went and they came back.'
The current assessment regime was established following a June 2004 Court of Final Appeal decision that said the government was obligated to set up a fair process for evaluating people's claims that they faced torture if returned.
Mr Kat said the fact the system that resulted was administered by the very same people who were responsible for administering the government's 'no asylum for refugees' policy meant that decision makers were potentially coming into the process with a skewed perspective.
The lack of training in how to objectively assess someone's claims to have been tortured, or even the legal framework in which such an assessment should be made, only contributed to the likelihood that applicants were not getting a fair hearing.