Federal Court. AAT convened 3 hearings: 1st was adjourned shortly after starting; 2nd was adjourned after 2.5 hours due to concerns about quality of the English / Tamil interpreting; 3rd was the substantive one. In its decision, AAT said it gave the 2nd hearing "little weight", given the interpreting concerns. Did Division 4 of Part 7 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) require AAT to disregard the entirety of the evidence at 2nd hearing?
Some of the questions to the Federal Court (FCA) were as follows:
Question 1: Did Division 4 of Part 7 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) require the Tribunal to disregard the entirety of the evidence given at the second hearing?
Question 2: If the answer to Question 1 is "no", does it follow that the Tribunal was not "otherwise limited in the use to which it could legitimately put the evidence adduced at the second hearing"?
Question 3: If the answer to Question 2 is "no", would the Appellant, in order to succeed in his judicial review application, need to "adequately address the limited use to which the Tribunal put the evidence from the second hearing"?
The FCA answered those questions as follows: