George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The courts are very practised, as I said a moment ago, in determining state of mind, and part of that forensic process is to determine whether a purpose is a sole purpose or one of a multiplicity of purposes.

In the example you have given, it would seem to me that, if there were a trivial, incidental event that was not the sole purpose of the travel but was engaged in while the person was travelling to a declared area for the sole purpose of, in the example you have just instanced, making a bone fide family visit, that would not defeat their reliance on the defence. We can quibble at the margins. You know the old legal maxim 'de minimis non curat lex'? Trivial, incidental examples would not defeat the operation of this principle, but the principle is important: a person must be travelling solely for that legitimate purpose. Now, if while they are there they do something entirely incidental that is not the sole purpose or even a purpose of their travel, I would not think that that would defeat them.