Sanctions 2025

AUSTRALIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Dennis Miralis, Jack Dennis, Henry Yu and Darren Pham, Nyman Gibson Miralis

3. Recent and Future Legal Developments 3.1 Significant Court Decisions or Legal Developments The three most significant court decisions or legal developments in Australia are: • Alexander Abramov v Minister for Foreign Affairs (No 2) (2023) , which challenged the designation of an individual and confirmed that sanctions could be imposed for past actions that have been dis - continued but also provided further insight into the administrative process of sanction-making – this decision, in turn, led to the Australian government passing legislation to reflect the outcome of this decision and retrospectively validate past sanction decisions; • Alumina and Bauxite Company Ltd v Queensland Alumina Ltd (2024) FCA 43 , which was Australia’s first case examining the sanctions regimes in the context of commercial contracts/force majeure and confirmed the broad scope of sanction provisions (see 6.1 Force Majeure for further details); and • the Full Federal Court decision (same name, [2024] FCAFC 142) dismissed this appeal in November 2024, confirming the primary judge’s reasoning. 3.2 Future Developments The Australian government has received reports from at least four reviews that addressed the Australian sanctions regimes: • DFAT’s review that commenced in January 2023 and concluded on 30 October 2024, titled “Review of Australia’s Autonomous Sanctions Framework”; • the Defence and Trade References Committee’s review that commenced in March 2024 and con - cluded in September 2024, titled “Australian Sup - port for Ukraine”, September 2024; • the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Reference Committee’s review that commenced in July 2024 and concluded in February 2025, titled “Australia’s sanctions regime”; and • the review by the Human Rights Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Reference Committee that commenced in December 2024 and concluded in March 2025, titled “Australia’s

thematic sanctions framework: A legislated review of the operation of the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Magnitsky-style and other Thematic Sanctions) Act 2021”. All in all, this patchwork of reviews lays out a variety of stakeholders’ views on Australia’s sanctions regimes and provides a starting point for an array of legal and regulatory developments. However, there is no draft legislation on the table. There are two general ways to “challenge” a designa - tion – namely, by requesting a revocation of the des - ignation or by seeking judicial review of the decision to designate. Request Revocation The specific procedure depends on the specific case factors, including what basis a person wants to chal - lenge the designation and under which specific regime the person was designated. By way of example, requests for delisting of: • UNSC listings should be made to the Focal Point for De-listing or through the country of citizenship or residence; • UNSC listings related to ISIL (Da’esh) and Al Qaeda should be made to the UN Office of the Ombud - sperson or through the country of citizenship or residence; 4. Delisting Challenges 4.1 Process • UNSC listings related to the counter-terrorism (UNSCR 1373) sanctions regime should be made to DFAT; and • listings related to Australian autonomous sanctions should be made to DFAT. Importantly for requests relating to Australian autono - mous sanctions, once any such request is made, the Minister is not required to review any further requests by (or on behalf of) the same entity for at least 12 months. That is to say, it is important that any initial request be properly made (with legal advice), lest there be a 12-month wait afterwards.

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