The Court held that paragraph 8.3 of Direction 110 contains two separate mandatory considerations: paragraph 8.3(1) requires consideration of the impact of the decision on the non-citizen's immediate family members, while paragraph 8.3(2) requires additional consideration of the strength, nature and duration of any other ties to the Australian community — and these cannot be merged or treated as a single inquiry. The Tribunal's conflation of these considerations, including its characterisation of paragraph 8.3(2) as merely 'allowing for' additional consideration, constituted jurisdictional error. The Court also held that the Tribunal failed to make a clearly reasoned positive determination as to whether non-revocation was in the best interests of the applicant's minor child as required by paragraph 8.4(1), though the Court rejected the contention that the Tribunal impermissibly engaged in hypothetical reasoning about third-party care arrangements where the child was already in the care of a third party.
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