Legal representation and country of origin are key factors in asylum seekers winning successful reviews of applications for refugee status, according to new research.

Asylum seekers represented by a lawyer are seven times more likely to succeed in appeals to the government tribunal that reviews refugee cases than for those who represent themselves.

And where refugees come from as well as which individual member is reviewing their case on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) can also be a factor in success.

These findings come from a team of researchers at Macquarie University led by Associate Professor Daniel Ghezelbash.

The researchers used data from freedom of information requests covering 18,196 cases decided by the AAT between January 2015 and December 2019.

They analysed the cases of asylum seekers who arrived by plane and had access to a review by the AAT.

Prof Ghezelbash said that for refugees and asylum seekers applying for protection visas in Australia, the process is lengthy and arduous.

“The initial assessment of a protection visa application is carried out by the Department of Home Affairs. If this is denied, the options for review then depend on how they arrived in Australia,” he said.

“Those who arrived by plane can seek review at the AAT, where they are given a fresh hearing assessing the merits of their claim for protection. Those who arrived by boat without authorisation can only access a much more limited form of review before the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA),” Prof Ghezelbash said.

If the asylum seeker’s claims fail at the IAA or AAT, they can then seek judicial review at the Federal Circuit Court, but only on the very narrow grounds of there having been some serious legal error, the research pointed out.

The study found that overall, asylum seekers received favourable outcomes before the AAT in just 13 per cent of cases. This includes instances where a visa has been granted or the matter was sent back to the department for reconsideration.

In the remaining 87 per cent of cases, the original decision to refuse a visa was affirmed by the AAT or the application was withdrawn, the research found.

“Our analysis of the data reveals much more about the factors that tend to lead to a successful or unsuccessful review,” Prof Ghezelbash said.

“One of the most striking findings relates to the potential influence of professional migration advice from a lawyer or migration agent,” he said.

“We found that only 4 per cent of unrepresented applicants were successful at the AAT. This figure rose to 28 per cent when an asylum seeker had legal representation.

“These statistics suggest the government’s decision to restrict public funding for free legal advice services may be severely disadvantaging applicants who cannot secure representation.”

The researchers also found differences in the success rates of applicants from different countries.

Of the countries that had 20 or more applications analysed applicants from Libya (91 per cent), Afghanistan (76 per cent), Ethiopia (61 per cent), stateless individuals (43 per cent), Iraq (53 per cent) and Iran (47 per cent) were the most likely to succeed with their reviews.

“While some variation is to be expected in these cases, the very high rates of decisions being overturned for certain countries raises concerns about the quality of the initial decisions being made on visas,” Prof Ghezelbash said.