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 in this report is as at 30 June 2014 for the 2013–14 financial year. Table 1 provides an overview of the tribunals’ work program.

Principal Member Ms Kay Ransome

Registrar Mr Colin Plowman

Table 1 – The tribunals at a glance
	MRT	RRT	MRT and RRT
Established	1999	1993
Cases on hand at 1 July 2013	17,437	1,973	19,410
Cases lodged	15,426	6,863	22,289
Cases decided	21,144	3,585	24,729
Cases on hand at 30 June 2014	11,719	5,251	16,970
% of primary decisions set-aside	30%	22%	29%
% of primary decisions affirmed	50%	72%	54%
% of cases withdrawn or otherwise resolved	20%	6%	18%
Average time taken to decide a case (weeks)	52	34	-
% of decided cases where applicant was represented	62%	64%	62%
Hearings arranged	20,035*	4,411	24,446
% of decided cases where hearing was held	55%	80%	59%
% of held hearings where interpreter was required	49%	87%	55%
Languages and dialects of interpreters	-	-	98
% of decisions taken to judicial review	7.4%	30.7%	10.8%
Decisions set-aside on judicial review as % of decisions made	0.3%	0.8%	0.3%
Members			137
Staff			335
Cost			$72.3 million

* Includes cases arranged to a hearing list.

Statistics

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 visas together.

Some percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding.

The tribunals decided 24,729 cases during the year and received 22,289 applications.