Full feds on the case … Refugee tribunal member substantially copied previous reasons of another member, which rejected application by a Tamil asylum seeker … Failure by RRT member to apply independent considerations … Go back, start again 

Plagiarism has derailed a decision by the Refugee Review Tribunal and the applicant’s case now has to be considered for a third time. MZZZW has had two goes in the RRT, two before the Federal Circuit Court, once in the Full Federal Court and now back to the tribunal. 

The full feds (Tracey, Murphy & Mortimer) thought that the tribunal were out of line in upholding a decision, by the minister’s delegate, to refuse of a protection visa for the 17-year-old Tamil. 

The delegate’s refusal went to the RRT (now a division of the AAT), heard by full-time member David Corrigan. 

The appellant’s claims centered on his Tamil ethnicity and fear of persecution by the Sri Lankan powers-that-be. Corrigan knocked him back, but failed to consider the claims about the potential harm he faced in Sri Lanka. 

He also mistakenly thought the lad was 20-years-old, not 17. 

The FCC set this decision aside and sent it back to a differently constituted tribunal, where part-time member Wendy Boddison got hold of it in November 2013. 

Again, the minister’s decision to refuse a protection visa was affirmed. The new tribunal did not consider the applicant risked persecution because everything now was peachy in Sri Lanka, although it was likely if he returned he would be “held in remand for a short period in poor and overcrowded conditions”.  

Boddison also cited “the vague and changing nature of his evidence”. 

However, many passages in Boddison’s tribunal decision had been lifted from passages in Corrigan’s earlier decision, which prompted another application for judicial review in February 2014. 

Strangely, the FCC dismissed the appeal, saying that everything was above board. 

“The tribunal conducted a proper examination … There is no evidence of bias attending the decision … A thorough and legally accurate consideration is evident.” 

The appellant was not told about his right to appeal, consequently it was filed out of time, but his application for an extension was granted. 

Before the full feds the minister and the RRT said that because Boddison had changed the order of some of Corrigan’s words there had been no copying. 

For example, “broke windows and doors” appeared in Boddison’s version as “broke the doors and windows”. 

However, the fulls thought that this amounted to no material difference between paraphrasing and verbatim copying. 

“In each case the use of the opinions of another statutory officer as the member’s own without attribution or disclosure that what appears in the reasons is not the work of that member.”

The FFC said that Boddison did not consider the appellant’s claims afresh, as she was supposed to do. 

“Member Boddison makes what purports to be a finding of her own but which is, in fact, a finding of Member Corrigan placed in her reasons in a way which appears as if it is a new finding … 

We are not satisfied Member Boddison brought an independent mind to the consideration of the appellant’s claims. She failed to discharge the statutory task imposed on the tribunal to consider an applicant’s claims on review for itself, afresh.” 

Back it does to another tribunal. Try again. 

MZZZW v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and Refugee Review Tribunal