Federal Court. May the Tribunal’s obligation under s 425 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) to invite a review applicant to a hearing include alerting the applicant to an issue arising from country information? Does the operation of s 424A(3)(a) reduce the breadth of the obligation under s 425?
Some of the questions to the Federal Court (FCA) were as follows:
Question 1: May the Tribunal’s obligation under s 425 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) to invite a review applicant to a hearing include alerting the applicant to an issue arising from country information?
Question 2: Does the operation of s 424A(3)(a) reduce the breadth of the obligation under s 425?
Question 3: Can it be said that, in order to assess whether the Tribunal has undertaken its statutory task in the manner required of it under s 425, attention must be given to what the relevant issue within s 425 is, whether that issue is new or formed part of what the delegate had considered dispositive to its reasons and that, if the issue is new, the Tribunal has an obligation to “tell the applicant what that other issue is”?
Question 4: Can it be said that the Tribunal had "no obligation to put to the applicant the “nature of any ‘case’ on which the Tribunal proposed to rely in contradiction to her case”?
The FCA answered those questions as follows: