The Law Before The Application

Australia does not run nine immigration systems. It runs one. Every visa in the country sits under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) and the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth). The states and territories run hospitals, schools and roads. They do not decide who may enter, who may stay and who may be removed. That single fact changes how the problem should be read. A state premier who campaigns on migration has no lever over the criteria, the points table or the cancellation powers. The lever sits in Canberra, and it is a statute. The United States runs a federal system with state-level variation in enforcement. Canada runs a provincial nominee pathway with real provincial control over part of the intake. Australia does neither. One Act, one set of criteria, applied the same way in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. The law also moves. The Legal Services Commission of South Australia warns readers about exactly this in its own handbook, because the instrument is amended by regulation rather than by a fresh Act. One jurisdiction to read. That is the good news. It is also the whole of the good news.

The Act gives the power. The Regulations decide who gets it. Visa subclasses, criteria, conditions and the points test all live in the Migration Regulations 1994. Schedule 6D carries the points test. The subclasses most applicants actually use, the 482 Skills in Demand visa, the 186 employer-nominated route, the 189 and 190 skilled routes, are defined there. That is deliberate design. A government can raise or lower a points threshold, tighten a condition or reorder a queue without taking a bill to the parliament. Direction 105 set skilled processing priorities until 25 July 2026, when Direction 119 replaced it and named the 482 inside the text. Partner and parent priority moved from Direction 102 to Direction 117 in the same period. Applications already in the queue were reshuffled, not restarted. Since 25 March 2026, Home Affairs publishes processing times as indicative only, on a monthly cycle. If you are modelling an outcome, model it against the Regulation in force at the lodgement date, not the one you started reading.

Most published material about Australian immigration is about getting in. The sections that decide whether you stay are the cancellation powers, and four of them recur. Section 109 covers incorrect information. If a visa was granted on information that was wrong, the Minister can cancel it, and the wrongness does not have to be deliberate. Section 116 covers non-compliance with a condition. It is the most used cancellation power in the Act, and it does not require dishonesty. It requires a condition and a breach. Section 137J cancels a student visa automatically where the holder is not complying with study requirements. Automatic means no discretion at the first step. Section 501 is the character test, and it carries more consequence per word than any other provision in the instrument. Public Interest Criterion 4020 sits alongside them for bogus documents and false information, and it brings a three-year ban on further applications.

The character test is arithmetic at its centre. A sentence of imprisonment totalling 12 months or more fails it. The total matters, not the single term, and separate sentences are added together even where they were served concurrently in practice. The rest of the test is not arithmetic at all. Association with a person or group suspected of criminal conduct, a risk to the community, and conduct a decision maker finds unacceptable all sit in the same section. A refusal or cancellation under section 501 can be revoked under 501CA. The Minister also holds a personal discretion under 501J that sits outside the ordinary review path. For an applicant, the practical point is that character is assessed late. It is not a box on the application form. It is a separate question asked by a separate area of the department, and it can arrive after years of lawful stay. Arithmetic for the first half. Judgement for the second. Only one of those can be prepared for.

One jurisdiction to read. That is the good news. It is also the whole of the good news.

Immigration assistance is restricted by statute. Providing it without registration is an offence under the Migration Act 1958. Only registered migration agents and legal practitioners can lawfully charge for it. The regulator is the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. Registration has a price. A Graduate Diploma in Australian Migration Law and Practice from an approved university, English at IELTS 7.0, a Capstone Assessment passed within 12 months of finishing the studies, professional indemnity insurance of at least AUD 250,000, and an annual registration fee of AUD 1,900 for 2026. The split in complaints handling is worth knowing before you engage anyone. Complaints about a registered agent go to the authority, which can cancel, suspend, bar or caution. Complaints about an unregistered adviser are outside that jurisdiction entirely and go to Home Affairs Border Watch. From 22 March 2021, legal practitioners practising migration law have not been eligible for registration. They must hold an unrestricted practising certificate from their state board instead. Two lawful routes, two different complaints routes. Check which one you are actually talking to.

Review of a visa decision goes to the Administrative Review Tribunal. The ART replaced both the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Immigration Assessment Authority on 14 October 2024. The function is unchanged. The Tribunal re-decides the case on the evidence rather than checking the original decision for error. What changed is the clock. AAT deadlines were extendable in practice. ART deadlines are not. Most onshore visa refusals allow 28 days from notification. Some bridging visa cancellations allow as little as 7 days. Character refusals on a delegate decision under section 501 or 501CA allow 9 days. After the Tribunal, judicial review in the Federal Court sits on a question of law only, with 28 days for most decisions and 35 days for migration decisions. Matters transferred from the old Tribunal were carried across. Decisions already made by the AAT are final and are not reconsidered. The deadline is the only part of the process that is not negotiable.

An application to the Tribunal costs AUD 3,580 at the standard rate, with 50 per cent refunded if the review succeeds and the decision is set aside or remitted. A reduced fee of AUD 100 applies where financial hardship is accepted, and the difference is refunded if the case is won. The old Tribunal charged AUD 3,002 and allowed deadline extensions. The new one charges more and allows none. The wait is where the money goes. Student visa refusals run 8 to 14 months. Skilled visas, the 482 and the 186, run 12 to 24 months. Partner visas run 24 to 36 months. Lodgement to decision for most matters lands between 18 and 48 months. Representation for a Tribunal matter typically costs between AUD 5,000 and AUD 15,000 on top of the filing fee. The probability that a deadline is missed is not a function of the merits. It is a function of who is watching the calendar.

I would fund the reading, not the application. One Act, one regulation and four cancellation sections. A file that shows the lodgement date, the version of the Regulation in force on that date and the deadline that followed is worth more than any amount of narrative about intent. I restructured a industrial group, and the lesson from that file transfers: the documents you cannot reconstruct later are the ones that cost you. Entrade built 200 wood-gasification machines across the UK and Europe, and the tenth build looked nothing like the first. I signed a personal guarantee on a company that folded on Christmas Day 2008. None of those are immigration matters. All of them are deadline and document matters. The statute is the same in every state and territory. The preparation is not. One is fixed. The other is the variable you actually control.