Comptroller-General of Customs & Ors v Amcor Limited

The Comptroller-General of Customs and two other applicants sought special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia from a decision of the Full Court. The dispute concerned the Comptroller-General's refusal to grant a tariff concession order for paper-making machinery. Such an order would have allowed the import of the machinery at a lower duty rate, with a significant financial implication of approximately $1 million in customs duty.

The primary legal issue before the High Court was whether the Full Court, in setting aside the Comptroller-General's decision, had improperly made its own findings of fact rather than confining itself to a question of statutory interpretation. The applicants argued that the Full Court, under the guise of interpreting the relevant provisions of the *Customs Act*, had in fact made a decisive judgment on the factual evidence, thereby exceeding the proper scope of judicial review.

The applicants contended that the Full Court's reasoning, particularly its findings on pages 46 and 49 of the application book, demonstrated that it had made factual determinations about the applicant's preparedness to accept orders for the machinery in the normal course of business. They submitted that these were effectively findings of fact, not merely conclusions based on a misconstruction of the Act, and that this led to an embarrassing situation for the decision-maker on remittal. The Full Court, however, appeared to frame its decision as one based on a misconstruction of the phrase "in the normal course of business" by the original decision-maker, leading to the setting aside of that decision.