Federal Court. In CRNL, the Full Court held that the Tribunal in that case had ascribed weight to the various considerations, having considered each in isolation, and then expressed a conclusion "without demonstrating that it actually weighed the various considerations against each other", which amounted to a jurisdictional error. Should CRNL be distinguished?
In reviewing a decision made under s 501CA(4) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), the Tribunal said as follows, after having individually weighed the considerations going in favour and against the applicant:
[137] The Tribunal considers that the totality of the very heavy weight it has attributed to Primary Consideration’s 1, 2 and 4, outweighs the weight it has allocated to the remaining Primary and Other Considerations.
[138] A holistic view of the considerations in the Direction therefore favours the non-revocation of the mandatory cancellation of the Applicant’s visa.
Some of the questions to the Federal Court (FCA) were as follows:
Question 1: Was the Tribunal's task to "identify the matters that it has considered, assess their relative significance and then to weigh each of those matters against each other in a manner that is largely instinctive and not capable of precise articulation"?
Question 2: In CRNL, the Full Court held that the Tribunal in that case had ascribed weight to the various considerations, having considered each in isolation, and then expressed a conclusion "without demonstrating that it actually weighed the various considerations against each other", which amounted to a jurisdictional error. Should CRNL be distinguished, based on what the Tribunal here stated at [137]-[138]?
The FCA answered those questions as follows: