Many administrative decisions fail review not because the decision-maker misunderstood the law, but because a legally required consideration never appears in the reasons. The statute was identified. The facts were gathered. The outcome might even have been correct on the merits. But somewhere between reading the file and writing the reasons, a mandatory consideration disappeared.
The appeal starts there. In the silence.
I kept seeing this pattern across Australian administrative law matters—FOI internal reviews, migration decisions, licensing refusals, disciplinary proceedings. Different regimes, different statutes, but the same structural failure. A submission gets acknowledged but never addressed. A statutory factor appears in the legislation but not in the reasons. The decision looks defensible until you map what was required against what was actually done.
It took a while to realise the inconsistency wasn't about bad decision-makers. It was about invisible architecture.
FOI redactions are disputes about discretion: how exemptions are invoked, weighed, and justified. Administrative law challenges are different. They turn on obligation. A mandatory consideration either appears in the reasoning path, or it doesn't. That distinction—mandatory versus discretionary considerations—is load-bearing. You just rarely see it spelled out.
At its core, every reviewable decision turns on a few questions: what did the statute require the decision-maker to consider, what did they actually consider, what were they permitted to weigh, and what happens when mandatory matters go unaddressed. None of this is visible when you're reading reasons that say "having considered all relevant matters" without listing them.
So I built the Consideration Matrix as a way to surface that hidden structure and give practitioners, decision-makers, and students a shared diagnostic tool for mapping consideration failures.
The matrix is a 2×2 grid. One axis: mandatory versus discretionary. The other axis: considered versus not considered. Four quadrants, four legal outcomes. Top-left is compliance (mandatory matter, properly considered). Top-right is lawful discretion (permissible matter, weighting applied). Bottom-left is jurisdictional error (mandatory matter, not considered). Bottom-right is no duty (discretionary matter, permissibly omitted).
Version 0.1 synthesises Peko-Wallsend, Li, and related authorities into a framework you can actually use during a file review. It makes it obvious where silence in reasons becomes a reviewable error, and where it's just discretion being exercised.
This is not a merits review tool. It's infrastructure for validity analysis.
When you can see what was required versus what was done, the argument changes. You stop debating whether the decision was "fair" in some abstract sense. You start debating whether a mandatory statutory consideration was addressed, whether reasons disclose the path from consideration to conclusion, and whether the failure was jurisdictional.
The matrix applies wherever validity depends on proper consideration of specified matters: FOI decisions under s 11B factors, migration decisions with ministerial direction criteria, licensing decisions with statutory preconditions, disciplinary proceedings with mandatory mitigating factors. Different statutes, same logic.
If you're preparing an internal review, drafting tribunal grounds, or teaching administrative law, this is the map I wish I'd had sooner.
It's on glasscase.org.
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