Federal Court (Full Court). Is it "permissible for the Court to speculate as to how the Tribunal might have reasoned or what conclusions it might have reached if it had not made the error in question"?
Some of the questions to the Full Court of the Federal Court (FCAFC) were as follows:
Question 1: In LPDT, the plurality of the High Court said that “[j]urisdictional error can refer to breach of an express or implied condition of a statutory conferral of decision-making authority which results in a decision made in the purported exercise of that authority lacking the legal force attributed to exercise of that authority by statute”. Can this include having regard to an irrelevant consideration which the statute forbids the decision-maker from taking into account in the exercise of the statutory power?
Question 2: Is it "permissible for the Court to speculate as to how the Tribunal might have reasoned or what conclusions it might have reached if it had not made the error in question"?
The FCAFC answered those questions as follows: