XXBN’s partner visa was cancelled under 501CA Migration Act after a series of domestic violence incidents, breaches of ADVO’s and ultimately several assault charges relating to his partner and her sister. The complication in the facts was that his partner (and her sister) had both given evidence that they had forgiven him. They also both provided statements in support of the cancellation being revoked.

Despite this support, his application to revoke the cancellation was unsuccessful and by the time it reached the Full Federal Court, the argument was about how to deal with two of the “other factors” which have to be considered under Direction 79, namely “strength, nature and duration of ties” and “impact on victims”.

The Applicant argued that each of those factors had to be considered separately and he would effectively receive a double weighting because his victims and his family were one and the same. The Court found: “The Tribunal implicitly acknowledged that it would have been a duplication to then give a further weighting in favour of revocation on the basis of the same considerations under other consideration (d) [impact on victims]. There is no error in that approach.”

And just for good measure the court agreed that “where a matter is relevant to two or more mandatory relevant considerations, a decision-maker is not usually required to take the matter into account repetitiously”

You can read the whole case here: XXBN v Minister for Immigration [2021] FCA 1047

Creative commons acknowledgment for the photograph.