The Department of Home Affairs has quietly updated its public guidance to confirm that Ministerial Direction 119 – signed off in late July – is now fully operational. The Direction overhauls the order in which case officers must assess nominations and visa applications across Australia’s core skilled-migration streams, including the Subclass 482 Temporary Skill Shortage (now branded “Skills-in-Demand”), Subclass 186/187 employer-sponsored permanent visas and the Subclass 189/190/491/494 skilled-points categories. The most striking change is the formal split between on-shore and off-shore applicants. For the first time, location at time of lodgement is a decisive factor: applications lodged by people already inside Australia now outrank those lodged from overseas, regardless of occupation, unless the latter relates to defence or law-enforcement work. This reverses a long-standing “first-come, first-served” culture and is intended to clear an estimated six-month backlog of on-shore skilled workers whose bridging visas are due to expire over the southern-summer holiday period. Direction 119 also groups occupations into five broad tiers. Defence and national-security roles sit at the top, followed by on-shore construction, healthcare and teaching professionals – areas the Albanese Government identified as chronic pinch-points in its April Jobs & Skills Summit communiqué. Business programmes such as the Subclass 888 Investor stream remain at the bottom of the queue, reflecting Labor’s promise to focus on “value-adding” skills rather than passive capital inflows. For employers, the immediate implication is a faster pathway for retaining staff who are already working in Australia on bridging or training visas. Migration agents report that nomination requests lodged last week for on-shore engineers have already moved to ‘initial assessment’, whereas comparable off-shore files lodged in April are still unallocated. Companies recruiting talent from abroad, however, should brace for longer lead-times and build additional flexibility into project start-dates. Prospective migrants are advised to review their travel plans carefully. Moving to Australia to lodge an application can be beneficial, but only if the applicant holds – or can obtain – a substantive visa that allows full work rights; otherwise, the bridging-visa waiting period could negate any priority gain. The Department recommends using its ‘Check Twice, Submit Once’ toolkit to ensure applications are decision-ready and warns that incomplete health or character documents will still be shunted to the back of the line despite the new hierarchy.
Source: Department of Home Affairs
