No decision, no refusal, no review — you simply are not invited
A points-tested applicant pays for a skills assessment and an English test, lodges an expression of interest, and waits. If their score is below the cut-off, nothing happens — ever. There is no decision, so there is nothing to be told, appealed or reviewed.
Steps this would change
Rationale
This is the purest case of invisible unmet need this database has found.
The points-tested process models at 629 days, of which 81 per cent is queue and zero days are assessment. Nobody evaluates anything about the applicant on the critical path. They lodge, and they wait to be selected.
What happens if they are not selected is nothing. Invitations are issued in rounds to the highest scores until the allocation is exhausted — the round of 4 June 2026 issued 10,000 invitations, with minimum scores from 65 points for some trades occupations to 100 for some specialist occupations. Below the cut-off there is no refusal, because there is no decision. Nothing is communicated. The person waits for the next round, which was expected by 30 September 2026, and then the one after.
Compare the other invisible populations recorded here. Legal assistance: the person asks and is told no. Energy rebates: the person never learns they were eligible. This is further along again — the person knows about the scheme, has paid for a skills assessment and an English test, has lodged, and still receives no answer of any kind.
And it is a designed silence. There is nothing improper about selecting the highest-scoring candidates for a capped program. What is missing is any obligation to tell the people who were not selected that they were not selected, or where they stand.
The proposal, using data already published:
- Tell each applicant, after each round, whether they were considered and how their score compared to the cut-off for their occupation. The department publishes the cut-offs; the applicant's score is in the system.
- Publish, by occupation, how many expressions of interest sit above and below the current cut-off. A person with 70 points for an occupation invited at 95 would learn something worth knowing, which is that they should make other plans.
- Notify before an expression of interest lapses, and when the occupation list changes in a way that affects it.
None of this changes who is invited. It changes whether the people who are not invited can act on that.
Who acts: the Commonwealth alone, in a system it operates.
What is being traded away
Telling people they will not be invited will be read as a refusal, and it is not one. A person informed that their score is far below the cut-off may abandon a plan that would have succeeded — occupation demand shifts, planning levels move, and Skilled Independent places rose from 16,900 to 21,090 for 2026-27. An indication of prospects is a forecast, and forecasts communicated by government are treated as commitments.
It would expose how long the odds are, and the department may not want that published. A queue of expressions of interest far exceeding the places available is politically awkward, and there is a legitimate policy interest in not advertising a pathway as closed when it is competitive. This site's standing answer is that publishing an uncomfortable number is worth doing anyway, and it should acknowledge that the answer is contested.
Publishing distributions invites gaming. A visible map of scores by occupation tells applicants exactly where the marginal point is worth buying — another qualification, another year of experience, a partner's skills assessment — which is rational for them and inflates the score distribution for everyone. Points tests inflate over time regardless; transparency accelerates it.
And this is the seventh zero-day transparency proposal on this site. The count is now the finding. Across thirty-seven Commonwealth objectives, the single most common thing this project can identify is a number that exists inside government and is not shared with the person it is about.
Precedent
The department already publishes invitation round results, including the number of invitations and the minimum score by occupation. Telling a person where their own score sits against those published cut-offs uses data the department has already released.
Sources
- Department of Home Affairs SkillSelect: an expression of interest is not a visa application; invitation determines whether a visa application may be made
- SkillSelect round of 4 June 2026: 10,000 invitations issued, all subclass 189; minimum invitation scores ranging from 65 to 100 points; tie-break date 24 April 2026; next round expected by 30 September 2026
- 2026-27 Migration Program: Skilled Independent rising from 16,900 to 21,090 places