Federal Court (Full Court). Does it follow from the High Court's decision in Plaintiff M1 that there is "an important distinction between considering (in the sense of adverting to and understanding) the representations made by an applicant seeking the revocation of a visa cancellation under s 501CA(4) (on the one hand) and considering the same representations, in the sense of evaluating their significance in the course of making the decision (on the other hand)"?
Some of the questions to the Full Court of the Federal Court (FCAFC) were as follows:
Question 1: Is there "an important distinction between considering (in the sense of adverting to and understanding) the representations made by an applicant seeking the revocation of a visa cancellation under s 501CA(4) (on the one hand) and considering the same representations, in the sense of evaluating their significance in the course of making the decision (on the other hand)"?
Question 2: If the answer to Question 1 is 'yes', does it necessarily follow that "it is for the Minister, acting reasonably and rationally and having demonstrably identified and understood the representations being made, to determine whether a particular matter is of significance"?
Question 3: If the answer to Question 2 is 'yes', does it necessarily follow that "a reviewing Court will need to decide if a failure to refer to a particular matter in the Minister's reasons, even a matter that was clearly articulated by the applicant or which clearly arose on the materials, may indicate that the Minister was not persuaded that it was of significance, or whether that failure is evidence that the decision-maker did not identify and understand the representations being made"?
Question 4: Is it the case that an administrative decision-maker alone should determine the weight to be afforded particular representations, which includes forming the view that the representation or a matter arising from the representation should be afforded no weight, so long as the decision-maker first understands the purport of the representations, facts and materials?
The FCAFC answered those questions as follows: