CAT/C/51/D/434/2010 persons on shore; almost one quarter (24 per cent) of the matters decided by the Tribunal were brought by Chinese applicants and China is in the top five countries in respect of which protection visas have been granted. 4.16 In this connection, the State party notes that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Tribunal consider hundreds of applications for protection visas from Chinese nationals each year. They have access to substantial resources providing country information. Accordingly, it submits that members of the Tribunal have particular expertise on China and significant experience dealing with claims for protection from Chinese nationals. 4.17 The State party further recalls that the complainant appealed the decision of the Tribunal before the Federal Magistrates Court and later to the Federal Court. Thereafter, between 26 March 2007 and 5 August 2010, he made a total of eight requests for ministerial intervention under sections 48B and 417 of the Migration Act. In this connection, the State party notes that the complainants appear to imply in their submissions that because these requests were not successful, new information provided to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was not properly considered. 4.18 In this regard, the State party submits that the ministerial intervention process offers a genuine opportunity for new claims that may engage its non-refoulement obligations to be made and that these claims are considered in good faith. However, the ministerial intervention process is not intended to be a further exhaustive review of the merits of protection claims: this function is undertaken by the Tribunal and is subject to judicial review by the courts in relation to legal error. It explains that the ministerial intervention process is intended to act as a “safety net” by providing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship with flexible powers to intervene in favour of an unsuccessful visa applicant if he thinks it is in the public interest to do so. In circumstances such as those of the complainants, where claims in relation to the non-refoulement obligations under the Convention have the same factual basis as claims considered in the protection visa process, the Minister’s powers are typically exercised only in exceptional or unforeseen circumstances, and therefore tend to result in visa grants in only a relatively small number of cases. The State party points out that, for example, during the financial year 2011–2012, the Minister decided 1,318 requests for intervention under section 417 of the Migration Act (with China being again the country of citizenship of the greatest number of applicants). The Minister granted visas in 35 per cent of those cases. The fact that the complainant was not successful in his repeated requests for ministerial intervention does not reveal any error in this process; rather it indicates that his case was deemed not to be sufficiently exceptional and did not raise any issues of non-refoulement obligations under the Convention to merit a different outcome than that which had been duly reached in the statutory protection visa assessment process. 4.19 The State party further emphasises that the new information received in January 2009 and in October 2009 from the complainant’s friends and family was duly considered by the national authorities. However they did not consider that these statements constituted credible evidence, as these individuals were not objective observers of the complainants’ case. 4.20 Furthermore, the State party observes that in a request for ministerial intervention on 5 August 2010, the complainant provided a court summons and detention notice from China, which he alleged to be evidence of his persecution by the Chinese authorities, and would have given weight to claims during his Tribunal hearings. It notes that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship assessed this information and concluded that it did not warrant a referral to the Minister. The assessment found that the summons and detention warrant lacked details to support the complainant’s claim that he had previously been detained by the Chinese authorities. The documents did not mention him escaping 8