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An Administrative Review Tribunal member has been accused by a fellow judge of “copy-and-pasting” his own court decisions in a blunder that saw a woman falsely accused of committing child sex crimes.
It’s the second time Jason Pennell has become embroiled in a plagiarism scandal after he was caught out six years ago copying large sections of a decision.
In the latest case, Pennell was reviewing a decision to cancel the visa of a woman convicted of armed robbery who was facing deportation to New Zealand.
But according to a separate decision by Justice Wendy Abraham in the Federal Court on Tuesday, Pennell had been copying and pasting swathes of incorrect material from one of his earlier judgments as a template for the new one.
In that case, from two months earlier, the applicant (known as Abbas) had been convicted of “five counts of sexually touching another person without consent and sentenced to an aggregate term of 15 months’ imprisonment”.
Pennell’s finding on the immigration case incorrectly said the woman had been convicted of those offences.
“The applicant does not have such convictions,” Abraham found. “Her index offence involved two counts of aggravated robbery, to which she pleaded guilty in 2001, and was sentenced to a suspended term of two years’ imprisonment.
“Given the nature of the information from Abbas that appeared in the Tribunal’s reasons, what likely occurred is that Abbas was used as a base template, with paragraphs removed and the applicant’s information inserted.
“The applicant submitted the attribution of a sexual touching conviction might have led the Tribunal to make a decision other than on the merits of her case.
“This is because: sexual touching is an offence of an inherently prejudicial nature, and the sexual touching offence in Abbas was committed against a minor.”
Pennell’s decision also incorrectly summarised the woman’s family situation – often a significant consideration in immigration decisions – and misidentified her gender, provided incorrect hearing dates and the wrong identities of legal counsel.
Abraham found these details were also likely extracted through a copy and paste from Pennell’s earlier decision.
Taken together, they represented “significant lack of attention by the Tribunal to the task at hand”.
“I accept the applicant’s submission that on an overall impression of the reasons I cannot be satisfied that the Tribunal brought an independent mind to the consideration of the applicant’s case,” Abraham said.
“I consider the appropriate characterisation of the error in this case is a failure to discharge the Tribunal’s statutory task.”
Abraham ordered the woman’s application to review her deportation be granted.
The decision came despite legal representatives for the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship claiming the errors were only “typographical”, stemming from a judge “employ[ing] strategies that save time in preparing written reasons”.
“For example, the errors were said to be so obvious that the fair-minded lay observer would attribute them to drafting and editing carelessness, rather than matters that were legitimately taken into account in the decision-making process,” the minister’s legal representatives claimed.
In 2020, Federal Circuit Court judge Christopher Kendall found “unacceptable” the “sheer extent of copying” by then senior member Pennell from Commonwealth submissions in a judgment about the deportation of an Iraqi citizen.
The Administrative Review Tribunal, which reviews decisions from government departments, did not respond by deadline to a request for comment.
Pennell is a general member of the tribunal after being appointed in 2017 by then attorney-general George Brandis.
General tribunal members are on annual salaries of $251,000.
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