Will Direction 117 Slow Down
Subclass 143 Parent Visas?
HOW DIRECTIONS 117 AND 103 TOGETHER SET THE PARENT VISA QUEUE
Ministerial Direction No. 117 commenced on 25 July 2026,
and enquiries from subclass 143 applicants soon followed:
has the parent visa queue just been reshuffled?
Since 25 July 2026, when Ministerial Direction No. 117 took effect, we have received a steady stream of enquiries from subclass 143 Contributory Parent visa applicants. Almost all of them come down to the same three questions:
Direction 117 prioritises onshore applications. Will the 143 be affected?
Will applications that already hold a Queue Date be re-ordered?
Will 143 waiting times get even longer?
01／Where the worry comes from
The concern stems mainly from one processing principle in Direction 117:
Extract from Direction 117
In plain terms: Family visa applications where the primary applicant was outside Australia at the time of application, or must be outside Australia at the time of grant, receive lower processing priority.
The 143 is a visa that is usually granted offshore, so read in isolation, that sentence makes the worry entirely understandable. But that sentence is not the whole story.
02／Family visas answer to two Directions, not one
The Department has made clear that family migration applications are processed under two Ministerial Directions operating together: Direction No. 117, made under ss 47 and 51 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), which sets the order for considering and disposing of Family visa applications; and Direction No. 103, made under s 91 of the Act, which governs the order of dealing with visa applications.
Home Affairs: Family visa applications are processed under two Ministerial Directions
For the 143 Contributory Parent visa, Direction 117 alone therefore cannot tell you where an application sits. It has to be read together with Direction 103, and with the cap and queue system that applies to parent migration.
03／What Direction 103 actually says
Direction 103 applies to every visa class subject to an annual cap under s 85 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), which includes the parent visa subclasses 143, 864, 173 and 884. More importantly, Direction 103 spells out how the two Directions relate:
Extract from Direction 103: the two Directions work together, and this Direction prevails in any conflict
Direction 103 and Direction 102 (or its succeeding Directions, now Direction 117) are intended to work together; to the extent of any conflict, Direction 103 prevails.
Section 8 of Direction 103 then sets the order of precedence: apart from limited exceptions such as ministerial intervention, Family visa applications governed by the Direction are to be processed in Queue Date order, starting with the earliest Queue Date, so far as it is reasonably practicable to do so. Applications remitted after review by a tribunal or court are assigned a Queue Date under departmental policy and take their place in the same order.
Section 8 of Direction 103: applications processed in Queue Date order
In other words, for parent visas managed under the cap and queue system, the principle Direction 103 insists on is not whether the applicant is onshore or offshore, but the order of Queue Dates. The Queue Date stated in your Queue Letter remains the key determinant of your place in the statutory queue.
04／Back to the three questions
As at the date of this article, we have found no public legal basis, and no published departmental policy, suggesting that merely because the 143 is usually granted offshore while the 864 is usually applied for onshore, Direction 117 displaces the existing Queue Date principle for parent visas, or gives 864 applications blanket priority over 143 applications with earlier Queue Dates.
That is not to say Direction 117 has no effect on parent visas at all. It may still influence matters such as how the Department allocates resources and distributes caseloads internally. Those are administrative variables worth watching, but they are a different thing from being re-queued.
For 143 applicants, there is no need at this stage to be unduly alarmed by Direction 117 alone.
The queue has not been reshuffled.
What decides your place is still the date on your Queue Letter.
Reading the two Directions together matters more than any one-line interpretation.
Sun Lawyers · Sydney Office
This article reflects a general legal analysis based on publicly available materials as at 7 August 2026. If you would like to understand your own case, or how Direction 117 may affect your application specifically, contact Sun Lawyers. We work in both English and Mandarin.
Phone: 02 9267 4988 ｜ Email: enquiry@sunlaws.com
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This article is general legal information only and is not legal advice.
Please contact us for advice specific to your situation.