Federal Court. Were the financial capacity criterion and enrolment criterion not entirely independent, with the result that the Tribunal's finding on the latter did not render its error on the former immaterial?
The AAT affirmed a delegate's decision to refuse to grant the Appellant a student visa. The AAT did so on two bases: it found that she did not meet the financial requirements; it found that she was not enrolled in a course of study. On appeal, it was common ground that the AAT made an error in relation to the first basis. The question was whether the AAT's second finding rendered the error in the first finding immaterial.
Some of the questions to the Federal Court (FCA) were as follows:
Question 1: Can it be said that, "even though almost two years had passed since she had applied for the visa and she had completed the course for which the visa had been sought, if the appellant was able to satisfy the enrolment criterion (that is, enrolment in another or new course) at the time of the Tribunal’s decision, the Tribunal could take that into account and, in effect, grant a visa in respect of a different course of study"?
Question 2: Can the Tribunal grant a visa?
Question 3: Were the financial capacity criterion and enrolment criterion not entirely independent, with the result that the Tribunal's finding on the latter did not render its error on the former immaterial? In other words, can it be said that, if the Tribunal "had considered the financial information and understood that she was able to satisfy the financial capacity criterion, in circumstances in which she had received an offer of enrolment and needed only to accept it and pay the first semester’s tuition fees, the Tribunal, acting reasonably, could have exercised its power to adjourn the oral hearing under s 363(1)(b) of the Act and, thereby, given the appellant a reasonable period of time to satisfy the enrolment criterion"?
The FCA answered those questions as follows: