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 (Migration Act). The tribunals’ jurisdictions, powers and procedures are set out in the Migration Act and in the Migration Regulations 1994.

Principal Member Denis O’Brien
Registrar Colin Plowman

Unless otherwise indicated, all information as at 30 June 2011 for the 2010–11 financial year.

	MRT	RRT	MRT and RRT
Established	1999	1993
Cases lodged	10,315	2,966	13,281
Cases on hand 1 July 2010	7,048	738	7,786
Cases decided	6,577	2,604	9,181
Cases on hand 30 June 2011	10,786	1,100	11,886
% of primary decisions set aside	41%	24%	37%
% of primary decisions affirmed	36%	70%	45%
% of cases withdrawn or otherwise resolved	23%	6%	18%
Average time taken to decide a case (weeks)	42	14
% of decided cases where applicant represented	65%	53%	61%
Hearings arranged	5,137	3,632	8,769
% of decided cases where hearing held	53%	74%	59%
% of hearings where interpreter was required	64%	84%	72%
Languages and dialects			89
% of decisions taken to judicial review	4%	20%
Decisions set aside on judicial review as % of MRT/RRT decisions made	0.3%	1.1%
Members			89*
Staff			284
Cost			$45.5m

* Includes 1 full-time Senior Member and 2 full-time members on leave of absence to the Independent Protection Assessment Office (IPAO), and 5 part-time members working on IPAO matters.

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.