If you have a partner visa application sitting with the Department of Home Affairs right now, there has been a shift in how these applications are handled that you need to know about — and it did not arrive with a press release.

The short version: if the Department asks you for more information, that request is your one opportunity to respond. Follow-up reminders are not routinely issued. If the deadline passes without a response, or without a properly made request for more time, a decision can be made on whatever is already sitting in your file.

For most visa categories that would be inconvenient. For partner visas, it can be the difference between a grant and a refusal.

What has changed

Where the Department needs more information to decide a partner visa application, it will provide an opportunity to respond once. Whether that arrives as a Request for Information or as a natural justice letter, it should be treated as the primary — and realistically the only — chance to deal with the concerns raised.

Three things follow from that:

• Follow-up or reminder requests for the same information will not routinely be issued.
• If the response period ends and nothing has been received, the application may be decided on the information available at that time.
• If you need more time, the request for an extension must be made within the original timeframe, and it must include reasons. An extension request lodged after the deadline is not a request for an extension — it is a late response to a decision that may already have been made.

There is also a clear expectation that applications are properly evidenced at lodgement, rather than lodged thin and topped up later once the Department asks. A recent internal review identified a number of partner visa applications that contained limited or insufficient evidence that the relationship was, and remained, genuine and ongoing.

What a request actually looks like, and how long you get

It will almost certainly arrive in ImmiAccount. Not by phone, and not as a friendly nudge. ImmiAccount is the Department’s preferred contact channel, and it is where correspondence lands.

The response period is stated in the letter itself. Do not rely on what a friend was given, or on what the timeframe was two years ago. Read the letter and diarise the date the day you receive it.

Two practical warnings:

• Emails to the partner visa mailbox will not be actioned quickly, and are only responded to in limited circumstances. Where ImmiAccount cannot be used, the partner processing enquiry form on the Department’s website is the correct route.
• Do not use two channels at once. Sending a webform and an email about the same issue does not double your chances. It splits your file, complicates your record and slows the application down.

If you are not checking ImmiAccount regularly — or if the contact details on the application belong to an old phone number or an email you no longer use — you are relying on luck. Check that your details and your sponsor’s details are current today.

Why this matters more for partner visas than for anything else

Partner visas are the one category where the evidence has to keep being true.

A qualification assessed in 2024 is still assessed in 2026. A relationship is different. The test is not whether your relationship was genuine when you lodged — it is whether it is genuine and ongoing. When an application has been waiting a long time, a file full of evidence from the year of lodgement does not answer the question the case officer is actually asking.

That is why “we submitted everything at the start” is no longer a safe position. It was complete then. The question is whether it is current now.

What “genuine and ongoing” evidence looks like in practice

The four pillars have not changed — financial aspects, the nature of the household, the social context of the relationship, and the nature of the commitment. We covered these in detail in our partner visa evidence guide. What has changed is the emphasis on currency.

In practice, evidence should be refreshed every six to twelve months while the application is pending:

• Financial — recent joint account activity, shared bills, evidence of genuinely pooled money rather than a single historic transfer.
• Household — a current lease or mortgage statement showing both names, utilities, and mail to the same address, dated across the whole period rather than clustered at the start.
• Social — photographs spread across the years and including people other than the two of you, invitations, travel, and statements from friends and family that are recent rather than written at lodgement.
• Commitment — updated statements from both of you where circumstances have changed: a move, a new job, a child, a period living apart and the reason for it.

Two mechanical points cost people more than they should. Documents must be uploaded into the correct category in ImmiAccount and labelled clearly and descriptively — a document filed under the wrong heading is, for practical purposes, invisible. And police certificates and health examinations expire. Check current processing times before you obtain them, so they are still valid when the file is assessed rather than expiring in the queue.

The two-year mark: nothing happens automatically

Once two years have passed since the partner visa application was lodged, you may become eligible for assessment at the permanent stage. That assessment does not begin by itself.

You or your representative must submit updated information directly into ImmiAccount at the two-year mark. One of the most common causes of delay is eligible applicants never commencing the Permanent Partner Visa Assessment in ImmiAccount — the file sits there, eligible, and nothing moves. Keeping your contact details current matters here too, because that is how the eligibility notification reaches you.

Police certificate rules at the permanent stage also differ from the temporary stage, and this catches people out:

• An overseas police certificate is required where you have spent 12 months or more cumulatively in the last 10 years in any country for which no previous clearance has been provided.
• A new certificate is required if you have spent 12 months or more cumulatively in that country since your subclass 309 or 820 visa was granted.
• Where character concerns exist, a new certificate is required regardless of how long you have spent overseas.
• The two-month threshold that applies at the temporary stage does not apply to permanent stage assessment.

If you have already missed a deadline

Do not assume it is over, and do not wait to find out.

If no decision has been made yet, upload the material immediately with a clear explanation of the delay — the application may still be under assessment. If a decision has already been made, review rights exist, but the timeframes are short and strictly applied, and they generally run from when the decision is taken to have been received rather than from when you opened the letter. That is not something to research over a weekend. Our article on why visa applications get refused explains how these situations usually develop.

Six things to do this week

1. Log into ImmiAccount and check for correspondence you may have missed.
2. Confirm your contact details and your sponsor’s contact details are current.
3. Check the expiry dates on your police certificates and health examinations.
4. Gather relationship evidence from the last six months — not from the year you lodged.
5. Check your uploaded documents are in the correct categories and sensibly named.
6. If you have passed the two-year mark and nothing has happened, find out why.

Where we can help

Most of the problems above are not legal problems. They are timing and organisation problems — a letter not seen, evidence that stopped at lodgement, a form never commenced, a certificate that quietly expired. They are also, unfortunately, the problems that produce refusals.

If your partner visa application has been pending for a long time, if you have received a request for information and are not sure how to answer it, or if you have passed two years and heard nothing, it is worth having someone look at the file properly. You can read more about how we handle partner visa applications, or book a consultation to talk it through.

This article is general information only and does not take your personal circumstances into account. Sohail Cheema is a Registered Migration Agent (MARN 1170438) practising in Canberra.