In Carrascalao v Minister [2014] FCAFC 107 the Court inferred that the Minister did not actually consider the material he was obliged to, before making his formulaic decision. The judgment discusses two cases in which the evidence showed that the Minister had at most about half an hour to consider hundreds of pages of material, which of course, he would not have done in that time.
The error was failing to give proper, genuine and realistic consideration to the merits of the cases. The Full Court explained:
129. … 43 minutes represents an insufficient time for the Minister to have engaged in the active intellectual process which the law required of him in respect of both the cases which were before him.
The Minister was also the subject of a Jones v Dunkel inference arising from the failure of one of the central characters, his Chief of Staff, to give any evidence:
130. Seventhly, the inferences which we have drawn from the material above in concluding that the Minister did not engage in the requisite active intellectual process, is reinforced by the fact that neither he nor his Chief of Staff gave evidence. Accordingly, we would apply the principle in Jones v Dunkel [1959] HCA 8; 101 CLR 298 which, we note, was also applied in the particular circumstances in the Douglas case at 61-62 and in other judicial review cases referred to therein. As the Full Court observed in the Douglas case at 62:
The application of the rule requires… that there be inferences available from the evidence which favour the other party. The failure of the Minister to call evidence does not provide positive evidence that he did not consider the representation but, unexplained, it leaves the Court in a position where opposing inferences can be more confidently drawn because they stand uncontradicted by the person who could say something about the true state of the facts: Jones v Dunkel at 308. The question then is what inferences were open on the evidence.
131. In considering whether the rule of evidence in Jones v Dunkel applies here, we have taken into account the multiple statements made by the Minister in his statement of reasons to the effect that he had considered, noted, accepted, recognised or had regard to various matters, as well as the concluding statement which appears in both statements of reasons that the Minister had “given full consideration to all of the information before me in this case” (emphasis added). The Minister may subjectively have believed these matters, including his claim to have given full consideration to all the information before him in both cases but, for the reasons set out above, we do not consider that his subjective belief is determinative when, for the reasons given above, the Minister did not have sufficient time to engage in the active intellectual process required by law before deciding to cancel the two visas.