Explainer, current as at 31 July 2026.
Two Ministerial Directions landed on 25 July - Direction 119 for the main skilled queue and Direction 120 for the talent lane.
If you already know what a Ministerial Direction is this post is not for you, if you don’t know what a Ministerial Direction is this post might help you understand them and their purpose.
As always this is provided as general information and is not provided as, intended to be, or should be taken to be immigration assistance. The information provided in this post is current as at 31 July 2026.
The power, in one sentence
Section 499 of the Migration Act 1958 lets the Minister personally give written directions to any person or body with functions or powers under the Act, about how those functions are performed or those powers are exercised.
That is the whole mechanism.
The Minister signs a document; everyone working under the Act must have regard to it.
Ministerial Directions are not law
The Department’s own instruction says it in four words: “Directions are not law.”
They are instructions - made at the highest level, but instructions.
Your eligibility for a visa comes from the Act and the Regulations, and nothing in a direction can change that.
The instruction is explicit about what a direction can never do:
A Ministerial Direction cannot invent a discretion the law does not give, it cannot order a particular outcome in a particular case, it cannot make a decision maker consider something legally irrelevant, it cannot take away or limit a discretion the law does give, and it cannot change migration law or narrow the meaning of visa criteria.
But they bind
Not law does not mean optional.
The instruction describes a section 499 direction as binding on every officer with functions and powers under the Act - and that includes both the original decision maker and the tribunal member reviewing the decision.
Both levels are directed to weigh the same relevant matters and follow the same procedures.
The decision maker still balances everything and reaches their own conclusion in each individual case - the direction cannot decide the case for them - and if a departmental officer departs from the direction, the reasons must be fully documented in the decision record.
In practice:
The queue order in Direction 119, and the assessment factors in Direction 120, are what your file will actually be read against.
Two hard rules from the Act itself
The Act puts two boundaries around the power.
A direction cannot be inconsistent with the Act or the Regulations.
And every direction must be laid before each House of Parliament within 15 sitting days of being given.
The Minister signs alone, but Parliament sees everything.
Why the numbers keep climbing
Directions are numbered in sequence and a number is never reused.
When a direction is replaced, the replacement takes the next number in the series - which is why the skilled queue went from Direction 105 to Direction 119, and the talent lane from 112 to 120, with the revocation of the old direction usually written into the first pages of the new one.
A direction ordinarily commences on a specified date, but where the matter is time-critical it can be written to commence the day after signing.
Once made, it stays in force until it is revoked.
Why old directions disappear
One line in the Department’s instruction quietly explains something we ran into last week:
Directions made under section 499 are not legislative instruments, so they are not registered on the Federal Register of Legislation.
They are published through the Department’s own systems - and when they are revoked, they come down.
That is consistent with what we found when writing about Direction 120:
The revoked Direction 112 is no longer on the public record.
It is also why this site keeps a Records section, preserving the instruments our notes rely on so that the sources survive after the originals come down.
A short history
The instruction carries the Department’s own register of directions - offered, in its words, for information only - and it starts at Direction no. 1, signed in September 1996, on assessing genuine visitors.
The register in that document runs to Direction 62, as at its 2014 reissue.
The series has kept climbing ever since:
By July 2026 the numbers had reached 119 and 120.
Thirty years of the same machinery, one signature at a time.
What this means for you
When our notes cite a Ministerial Direction, you are reading Government policy that binds how officials order their work and weigh their considerations - at the counter and at the tribunal.
You are not reading new law.
What you must prove has not changed;
The order in which files are read, and the lens they are read through, is what a direction sets.
That distinction is the whole reason these notes exist.
Source: the Department of Home Affairs departmental instruction on section 499 directions (centralised departmental instructions system, reissued 9 May 2014), provided to us in full, and the provisions of section 499 of the Migration Act 1958 as set out within it.
Companion notes: Ministerial Direction 119 and Ministerial Direction 120.
This is this is provided as general information and is not provided as, intended to be, or should be taken to be immigration assistance.
The information provided in this post is current as at 31 July 2026.