440 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:401 to lack credibility as to the harm feared in the country of former habitual residence.210 In sum, while the refugee protection regime is currently an important source of protection for stateless persons in Australia, significant gaps remain for two key reasons. The first is that there are inherent limitations in the terms of the refugee definition itself. The second is that, to date, there has been a lack of harmonisation between the interpretation of the refugee definition, on the one hand, and the sophistication and evolution in the international community’s understanding of the causes and consequences of statelessness as a human rights issue, on the other. D Complementary Protection Australia’s complementary protection regime commenced on 24 March 2012,211 yet between that date and 21 August 2015 (the cut-off point for our study), there were no decisions in which an applicant was granted complementary protection for reasons of statelessness. Since many of the publicly available tribunal decisions found that the stateless asylum applicants were refugees, the complementary protection criteria were not considered.212 However, as Lambert has noted, human rights law may provide a different lens for assessing the risk of harm if a person is removed. For example, the United Kingdom Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has made clear that under human rights law, ‘the issue of whether there would be serious obstacles to re-admission must remain central to the question of whether there is a real risk of serious harm.’213 Of the remaining reported decisions, the applicant was either found not to be credible,214 or the harm feared was considered of insufficient gravity either to meet the threshold of persecution (required for refugee status pursuant to s 210 1101896 [2011] RRTA 401 (30 May 2011) [91] (Member Roushan). 211 For details, see Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong, ‘Complementary Protection in Australia Two Years On: An Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence’ (2014) 42 Federal Law Review 441. 212 This follows from the wording of s 36(2)(aa) of the Migration Act. 213 YL Eritrea [2003] UKIAT 00016 (30 June 2003) [64] (Vice President Storey), quoted in Refugee Status, UN Doc PPLA/2014/01, 39. 214 1311126 [2014] RRTA 173 (3 March 2014) [38], [43] (Member Irish); 1319591 [2014] RRTA 619 (31 July 2014) [54] (Member Irish); 1402190 [2014] RRTA 602 (28 July 2014) [47]–[51] (Member Shanahan); 1212334 [2013] RRTA 566 (22 August 2013) [42]–[44] (Member Shanahan).