The Tribunals at a glance

The Migration Review Tribunal (the MRT) and the Refugee Review Tribunal (the RRT) are established under the Migration Act 1958 (the Migration Act). The tribunals' jurisdictions, powers and procedures are set out in the Migration Act and in the Migration Regulations 1994 (the Migration Regulations).

Unless otherwise indicated, all information is as at 30 June 2012 for the 2011–12 financial year.

Principal Member Mr Denis O'Brien
Registrar Mr Colin Plowman

	MRT	RRT	MRT and RRT
Established	1999	1993
Cases lodged	14,088	3,205	17,293
Cases on-hand at 1 July 2011	10,786	1,100	11,886
Cases decided	8,011	2,804	10,815
Cases on-hand at 30 June 2012	16,863	1,501	18,364
% of primary decisions set aside	36%	27%	34%
% of primary decisions affirmed	39%	68%	46%
% of cases withdrawn or otherwise resolved	25%	5%	20%
Average time taken to decide a case (weeks)	60	21
% of decided cases where applicant represented	65%	61%	64%
Hearings arranged	6,663	4,182	10,845
% of decided cases where hearing held	50%	76%	57%
% of held hearings where interpreter was required	58%	83%	68%
Languages and dialects of interpreters			84
% of decisions taken to judicial review	3.2 %	23.5%
Decisions set aside on judicial review as % of decisions made	0.2%	0.8%
Members			112*
Staff			303
Cost			$53.3 million

* Includes members working with the Independent Protection Assessment Office (IPAO).

Statistics

All statistics used in this report are of 'cases'. Multiple applications for review are counted as a single case where the legislation provides that the applications for review can be combined, usually where members of a family unit have applied for the grant of visas at the same time.