The Leaked 189 Tier List Home Affairs Won't Publish: Australia's Hidden Four-Tier Occupation System, Explained.

There is a Home Affairs document dated 21 May 2025 that decides whether your 189 visa invitation ever comes.

It is marked OFFICIAL: Sensitive. It has been running the 189 invitation system for 14 months. And 14 months in, Home Affairs still has not put it on the public page every applicant reads.

This guide is that document, translated. Every occupation. Every tier. Every multiplier. Straight from the government's own tables, so you can search for your ANZSCO? code and know where you stand.

General information about the 189 Skilled Independent visa framework as documented in FOI-released Australian Government records. Not advice for your situation. For advice on what to do in your particular case, talk to a Registered Migration Agent at mara.gov.au.

A quick note on the word "leaked"

What changed, in one paragraph

In 2025, the Department quietly introduced a four-tier occupation prioritisation model to the 189. Every eligible occupation was sorted into one of four tiers. Each tier gets a different multiplier applied to the ABS employment "stock" of that occupation to calculate its annual invitation ceiling. Tier 1 (medical specialists, nurses, GPs) gets a 4.0% multiplier. Tier 4 (accountants, ICT, chefs) gets 0.5%. That is an 8x gap in ceiling before a single point is counted.

And the public Home Affairs page will not tell you which tier you are in.

How the tier system actually works

The maths is not complicated. What is confusing is that it is not published.

1. 1Each tier has an occupation ceiling multiplier. That multiplier is applied to the average number of workers in that occupation across Australia (the ABS "stock" figure, taken at the ANZSCO? 4-digit Minor Group level) to set the annual ceiling.
2. 2Then, before your 189 EOI? (Expression of Interest?, your hand raised in the SkillSelect? pool) is even considered, the Department subtracts every grant made in your Minor Group in the preceding year under three other visa streams: 186 Employer Nomination Scheme, 190 Skilled Nominated, and 491/494 Regional.
3. 3Whatever ceiling is left after those subtractions is what the 189 program can invite in your occupation this year.

The document also lowered the minimum invitation threshold from 1,000 per Minor Group to 500. In its own words, the 1,000 threshold "has been ineffective as a control mechanism." The previous ceiling multiplier used across all occupations was 6%. That 6% has now been split into four tiers at 4.0%, 2.0%, 1.0%, and 0.5%.

None of this requires a change to any migration law. Paragraph 13 of the document is direct: "This proposal requires no legislative changes and can be implemented at the Department level using existing delegations."

The Assistant Secretary signed off on it. The recommendations page shows "Agreed" circled next to every point. That is why it is running.

The four tiers, and every occupation in each

Below is what Attachment B of the FOI'd document actually contains. Search for your occupation name or your ANZSCO? code. If you are reading on desktop, Ctrl-F is your friend.

Does the model actually match what happens in real rounds?

Yes.

The 4 June 2026 round was the final 189 round of program year 2025-26. The cut-off scores by occupation type matched the tier framework exactly:

The community has already worked this out. From a Mechanical Engineer on r/AusVisa in May 2026: "189 is unofficially closed for us, thanks to the latest tier system. Is anyone getting any 190/491 state invites?" From an onshore accountant the same month: "85/90/100 for 189/190/491, what's realistic from here?"

Applicants are operating on the tier framework because they have to. They are getting it from Reddit and migration agents. Not from Home Affairs.

The public page that should say all this, and does not

The document names a "communication plan" in paragraph 22. To be led by the Immigration Outreach and Engagement Branch.

Fourteen months later, on 16 July 2026, the public Home Affairs page at `immi?.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skillselect?/invitation-rounds` contains zero mentions of the tier system. We downloaded it and searched. The words "tier" and "tiered" appear nowhere. The multipliers 4.0%, 2.0%, 1.0%, 0.5% appear nowhere. The Minor Group approach is not described. Only "occupation ceiling" appears at all, three times, stripped of the tier context that gives it meaning.

The framework the Department is running and the framework the Department is describing are two different things. That is the story.

What this means for you, by tier

We are not going to tell you what to do. Whether you switch pathway, wait, or leave the country is a decision only you can make about your own life. What we can do is give you the honest read of the document so your decision uses real information.

What Home Affairs owes applicants

The framework was approved by an Assistant Secretary. It is operational. It affects the hundreds of thousands of people in the 189 EOI? pool, plus their dependents. The document names a communication plan. That plan has not shown up on the public page in 14 months.

Not every part of an internal minute needs to be published. Some redactions in the FOI release are legitimate under the Act. But the tier structure, the multipliers, and the occupation composition are not redacted. They are in the clear in the released document. They can be published on the invitation-rounds page today. Nothing prevents it.

You can run a policy internally. You cannot run a policy of this scale in silence and call it fair. The least the Department can do is name what it is doing.

What you can verify yourself

• The FOI release itself (Document Reference FA 25/10/00198): a public mirror is hosted at smartvisaguide.com/static/dist/library/189_Policy_Document.pdf.
• The Home Affairs public invitation-rounds page, so you can see the gap for yourself: immi?.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skillselect?/invitation-rounds.
• The MARA? register to find a Registered Migration Agent?: mara?.gov.au.

FAQ.

This is general information about a government framework documented in FOI-released records. Not immigration advice for your situation. Immigration decisions are serious. If you are making a big call, talk to a registered migration agent. The MARA register is at mara.gov.au.

More guides.

General information about the 189 Skilled Independent visa framework as documented in FOI-released Australian Government records. Not advice for your situation. For advice on what to do in your particular case, talk to a Registered Migration Agent at mara.gov.au.