Direction 119 lasted eight weeks. Here's exactly what replaced it.

On 19 September 2026, the Department of Home Affairs began processing skilled visa applications under two new instructions: Ministerial Direction 121 and Ministerial Direction 122. Direction 121 formally revokes Ministerial Direction 119, which had only been in effect since 25 July 2026 - eight weeks earlier.

Neither of the new Directions changes who is eligible for a visa. What they change is the order in which the Department picks files up off the pile. Reading all three instruments side by side shows a real reshuffle, not just a relabelling.

What is a Ministerial Direction, in plain terms

Under section 499 of the Migration Act 1958, the Minister can issue written directions telling Department decision-makers how to go about their work. Both new Directions state this in almost identical terms: they don't change the composition of the skilled migration occupation lists, and applicants must still meet the requirements set out in the Act and Regulations to be granted a visa. A Direction like this governs queue order, not eligibility.

Confirmed: the new order reaches applications already on hand

Both Direction 121 and Direction 122 contain the same "to avoid doubt" clause: each applies to visa applications already made but not yet decided, as well as to applications made from 19 September 2026 onward. There's no grandfathering and no separate track for older applications - an application lodged in 2025 is re-sorted into the new tiers exactly the same way a new one lodged this week would be.

The new priority order

Direction 121 covers the Skills in Demand (subclass 482) visa, and the closed Temporary Skill Shortage subclass 482 it replaced in December 2024. Applications are ranked:

• Any primary applicant - in Australia or outside it, this tier carries no location requirement - in an occupation connected to construction, healthcare, teaching, agriculture, aquaculture, fishing or resources, or to Australia's law enforcement or defence interests.
• Applications in the Specialist Skills stream of the Skills in Demand visa (also with no location requirement).
• All other applications where the primary applicant was in Australia when they applied.
• Applications where the primary applicant was outside Australia when they applied, provided the application was never combined with anyone else's.
• Everything else - in practice, offshore applications outside the named sectors that were combined with another person's application, plus anything not otherwise covered.

Direction 122 covers the provisional and permanent skilled visas - subclasses 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 489, 491, 494, 887 and 888. The order is the same, minus the Specialist Skills tier, which only applies to the Skills in Demand visa.

Both Directions give a combined application (for example, a partner or child included with a primary applicant) the same tier as the primary applicant's own application. In practice, this is where the offshore tiers do real work: an offshore primary applicant whose application will never be combined with anyone else's reaches the higher offshore tier; an offshore primary applicant whose application is combined with a partner or child does not meet that description, and their whole family group falls to the bottom tier instead. Under Direction 119, there was no such split - every offshore application outside the priority occupations sat in a single bottom tier regardless of whether it was combined.

What Direction 119 said, for comparison

Direction 119 used a similar idea but a different shape. Its top two tiers were reserved for law enforcement and defence occupations specifically, split by location - onshore first, then offshore, both ranked above a third tier for healthcare, teaching or construction occupations, which only existed for onshore applicants. An offshore applicant in a healthcare, teaching or construction occupation had no dedicated tier at all under Direction 119 and fell straight to the bottom, alongside every other offshore application with no priority occupation.

The new top tier folds all of the named sectors - including law enforcement and defence - into one location-neutral tier. The practical effect is that an offshore applicant in a named sector, who would have had no priority standing at all under Direction 119 unless working in law enforcement or defence, now reaches the very top tier under Directions 121 and 122.

New and broadened priority sectors

Direction 119 recognised construction, healthcare, teaching, law enforcement and defence occupations. Directions 121 and 122 add agriculture, aquaculture and fishing as one combined category, and resources as a separate one - both entirely new. Agriculture, aquaculture and fishing covers roles directly involved in growing, catching, breeding or producing crops, livestock, poultry or seafood, the support work around that (animal health, irrigation, quality assurance, farm supervision), and the slaughtering, processing or preparation of those products for sale. Resources covers roles directly supporting the exploration, extraction or production of minerals, oil, gas or coal - including mine closure and rehabilitation work - and specifically includes mining engineers, geologists and hydrogeologists, drillers and miners, mining production managers, surveyors, metallurgists, and several fitting and machining trades. Construction gained two additions not in Direction 119's definition: engineering managers, and civil engineering draftspersons and technicians.

The defence-occupation definition changed too, and not just by expansion. Under Direction 119, a "defence" occupation meant a small, specific list of ADF service-member occupation codes. Under Directions 121 and 122, it also covers anyone whose occupation relates to, or supports the delivery of, the AUKUS submarine program, and - separately from actual ADF service - anyone who holds a letter of support from the ADF or Department of Defence and either ordinarily works at a defence facility or works in an occupation supporting the production or supply of defence-related materiel or technology. In practice, that reads as extending well beyond uniformed personnel to civilian and contractor roles connected to defence industry and the AUKUS program.

Two structural changes worth knowing about

Neither existed under Direction 119. First, both new Directions give delegates explicit discretion to depart from the standard priority order for a specific application where they're satisfied it involves compelling circumstances - naming community safety, and the continuity of essential religious, cultural or community services in Australia. Direction 121 adds a third ground specific to temporary visas: Australia's international relations. Direction 122 does not include that third ground.

Second, Direction 119 set two separate priority orders - one for nomination applications, the employer's sponsorship step covering subclasses 186, 187, 482 and 494, and a broader one for visa applications. Reading Directions 121 and 122 closely, neither contains an equivalent nomination-application ordering; both apply only to the visa-application stage. Based on the text of these two instruments, priority ordering for the nomination stage appears to have been dropped rather than carried into a new instrument.

Onshore or offshore

Location still matters under both Directions, but only once an application clears the named-sector tier. Within the priority sectors, and within the Specialist Skills stream, location makes no difference at all. Outside those categories, being in Australia at lodgement still ranks above being outside Australia, and an uncombined offshore application now ranks above a combined one.

What this could mean, both ways

The broadened top tier means more applicants can reach the highest priority level than before - not just onshore applicants in the original three sectors, but offshore applicants too, applicants in three additional sectors, and applicants under a wider defence definition. The new discretion clause also gives the Department a documented way to prioritise an individual case for reasons outside the standard occupation-and-location criteria.

The same restructuring that broadens the top tier narrows things at the bottom. An offshore, non-priority-sector application that's combined with a partner or child now sits below where an equivalent uncombined application would sit - a distinction that didn't exist under Direction 119, where all such offshore applications were treated the same regardless of combination. And if nomination-stage priority ordering really has been dropped, employers and sponsors may find the nomination step itself no longer benefits from any stated processing priority, even where the eventual visa application will.

Applicants in the newly added sectors move from having no priority standing at all to the top tier. Applicants connected to defence industry or the AUKUS program, without being ADF members themselves, may now qualify under the broadened defence definition where they wouldn't have under Direction 119. None of this changes whether an applicant meets the visa criteria - only where their application sits in the queue.

What has not changed

• Visa eligibility criteria remain governed by the Act and Regulations, not by these Directions - both state this directly.
• Direction 114 and Direction 120, covering other skilled and business visa categories, remain in force and are untouched.
• The core exclusions carry over largely unchanged: applications remitted by a tribunal for reconsideration, cases where a tribunal has already substituted its own decision, cases where it's "readily apparent" the criteria won't be met, and the tribunal itself are all outside the scope of both Directions, much as they were under Direction 119. One exclusion was narrowed slightly - a family-unit member's application is now only excluded if the primary visa holder was also in Australia when they themselves applied, an extra condition Direction 119 didn't include.
• Direction 122 retains a clause governing how priority interacts with annual visa caps under section 85 of the Act, materially unchanged from Direction 119's equivalent provision. Direction 121 has no equivalent clause, consistent with temporary visas not being subject to that kind of annual cap.

Direction 119 governed skilled visa processing priorities for eight weeks before being formally revoked by Direction 121 on 19 September 2026, with Direction 122 taking over the provisional and permanent categories at the same time. Both new Directions apply to applications already on hand as well as new ones. The top priority tier no longer requires an onshore location, three new sectors have been added alongside a substantially broadened defence-occupation definition, and a new discretion clause lets delegates depart from the order for compelling circumstances. Priority ordering for nomination applications, which existed under Direction 119, does not appear in either replacement. Eligibility criteria are unchanged throughout.

This article is general information only and isn't migration advice. Ministerial Directions can be amended or replaced with little notice, as this one demonstrates. For guidance on how these Directions may relate to a specific application, book a consultation.