Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v WZANC

The appeal was brought by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship against a decision of the Federal Magistrates Court, which had quashed the decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal (the Tribunal) to affirm the decision of a delegate of the Minister to refuse the respondent's application for a protection visa. The Minister sought to appeal against the quashing of the Tribunal's decision on the ground that the Tribunal had erred in having regard to evidence given by the respondent to the Tribunal as initially constituted, which had been quashed by the Federal Magistrates Court on the basis that the Tribunal had failed to consider an integer of the respondent's claims. The respondent contended that the Tribunal had committed jurisdictional error by failing to conduct a hearing de novo. The court held that the Federal Magistrate had erred in holding that the Tribunal had regard to irrelevant material and, so, fell into jurisdictional error by having regard to the evidence and claims made by the respondent before the Tribunal as initially constituted. The court found that the Tribunal as reconstituted, made its own findings in respect of all of the evidence which was before it and embarked upon its own reasoning process in relation to the evidence. The court held that the appeal was allowed and the matter was remitted to the Federal Magistrate to determine the three remaining grounds of review.