In opening the government's reply today, the Crown's lawyer James Every-Palmer QC said all relevant considerations were taken into account in making the decision, based on information that was available to it and that it considered to be reliable, and that it provided full reasons and correctly interpreted the act and did not act unreasonably.
"The application for judicial review here attacks matters that are really for the decision maker - the process of inference, the weighting of evidence, and the evaluative judgements it made," Every-Palmer said.
"In our submission it's fair to characterise the application as seeking a merits review of the decision that was made, effectively an extra round of the decision-making process, but one in which there's only one interested party participating, and so the new material and evidence presented hasn't been tested in any systematic way."
Every-Palmer stressed the decision was "absolutely was not affected by any concerns about how China might react", and later referred to an affidavit from former minister Dean on her making the decision not to impose duties.
Dean noted that "during the investigation, I recall noting media reports about the visit by the Premier Li Keqiang to New Zealand around March 2017, but the matter discussed in those media reports did not affect my decision in any way", Every-Palmer said.