Protection Visa Success Rates in Australia

What is the protection visa success rate in Australia?

There is no single protection visa success rate in Australia, because published grant rates vary widely by stage and by cohort. Any figure quoted as the success rate is measuring only a slice of the system. The Department of Home Affairs publishes a monthly grant rate for onshore Protection (Subclass 866) applications. The Administrative Review Tribunal publishes separate figures for reviews of protection refusals. The two numbers count different things, at different stages, for different groups of people, and neither predicts the outcome of an individual case.

The published figures are nonetheless worth understanding, because they are the numbers that shape what people expect. In the Department's monthly update for August 2026, 1,989 refugee status determinations were made and 750 Subclass 866 visas were granted, a published grant rate of 37.71 per cent. In the June 2026 update, 3,147 determinations were made and 163 visas were granted, a published grant rate of 5.18 per cent. Those two months are eight weeks apart. The law did not change between them. The applicants did not become more or less deserving.

At the Administrative Review Tribunal, the pattern is different again. In the Tribunal's protection caseload summary covering 14 October 2024 to 31 March 2025, 6,695 applications were finalised. The Tribunal set aside the Department's decision in 801 of them, which the Tribunal records as 12 per cent. It affirmed the refusal in 4,664, or 70 per cent. In the summary covering July 2025, 2,370 matters were finalised and the set aside rate was recorded as 9 per cent.

So the honest answer, stated plainly, is this. Most onshore protection applications are refused at the first stage. Most reviews of those refusals are unsuccessful. But the specific percentage attached to any given month tells you about the Department's processing queue that month, not about the strength of any claim, including yours. The rest of this article explains what the figures actually measure, why they move so much, and what does in fact decide a Subclass 866 protection visa application.

If you are at the start of this process, the practical question is not what the national rate is. It is whether your claim engages the legal test, and whether the evidence in front of the decision maker actually supports it. Those are the two things that decide cases, and they are the two things you have some control over.

What the Department's published grant rate actually measures

The Department's published grant rate is a monthly processing statistic, not a cohort outcome. It is calculated by dividing the number of Subclass 866 visas granted in a calendar month by the number of refugee status determinations finalised in that same month. The people counted in the numerator and the people counted in the denominator did not all apply at the same time, do not come from the same countries, and in many cases did not lodge in the same decade.

This matters more than it sounds. A protection visa application lodged today may sit in the queue for years. The Department has a large on hand caseload. In the August 2026 monthly update, 20,625 applications were awaiting a refugee status determination. When the Department finalises a batch of older applications from one caseload in a particular month, the grant rate for that month moves with the character of that batch. It is a measure of what came off the pile, not a measure of how likely a new application is to succeed.

The figure is also a primary stage figure only. It counts the Department's own decisions. It does not include cases later set aside by the Administrative Review Tribunal, and it does not include cases remitted by a court. A person recorded in the "not granted" column in one month may hold a Subclass 866 visa two years later after a successful review. The monthly grant rate never catches up with them, because the Department's monthly update is a snapshot of decisions made, not a running tally of where people ended up.

There is one further limitation that is rarely mentioned. The published rate counts individuals, and a single application can include family members. A decision on one family application can therefore move several people at once in both the numerator and the denominator.

None of this makes the published figures useless. They are the best available picture of how the onshore protection caseload is being processed, and they are produced by the Department rather than reconstructed from guesswork. They simply do not answer the question most people are asking when they search for a success rate. If you want to understand the requirements that are actually applied to your application, the criteria for the Subclass 866 protection visa are a far better guide than any percentage.

A word of caution about figures found elsewhere. Grant rate numbers circulate widely on migration websites, and many of them are years out of date or were never sourced from the Department at all. Every figure in this article comes from the Department of Home Affairs monthly updates or the Administrative Review Tribunal's own caseload summaries. If a number cannot be traced to one of those, treat it as decoration.

Why the monthly grant rate swings so violently

The monthly grant rate swings because the mix of cases being decided changes from month to month, not because the standard of proof changes. Set the Department's own published monthly updates side by side and the pattern is obvious.

• February 2026: 2,264 refugee status determinations, 300 visas granted, published grant rate 13.25 per cent
• March 2026: 2,551 determinations, 300 granted, 11.76 per cent
• May 2026: 3,359 determinations, 614 granted, 18.28 per cent
• June 2026: 3,147 determinations, 163 granted, 5.18 per cent
• July 2026: 2,169 determinations, 850 granted, 39.19 per cent
• August 2026: 1,989 determinations, 750 granted, 37.71 per cent

Within six months the published rate moved from 5.18 per cent to 39.19 per cent. No legislative amendment explains that. The test in section 36(2)(a) of the Migration Act 1958 for refugee status, and the test in section 36(2)(aa) for complementary protection, were the same in June as they were in July.

What changes is which cases reach a decision. When the Department works through a batch of applications from a caseload with few well founded claims, the rate for that month falls. When it finalises a group of cases with strong country of origin evidence, the rate rises. Processing decisions made inside the Department, about which files to prioritise, move the published number far more than anything happening in the world outside.

This is the single most misread statistic in Australian protection practice. People see a low month and conclude the system has hardened. They see a high month and conclude it has softened. Neither reading survives contact with the underlying data. A monthly grant rate is a report on the Department's workflow. It is not a probability, and it should never be used as one.

The practical consequence for an applicant is straightforward. Do not time an application, or a decision about whether to press on, around a published rate. The rate that will exist in the month your case is decided is unknowable, and it would not describe your case in any event.

What happens at the Administrative Review Tribunal

Most protection visa refusals carry a right of review to the Administrative Review Tribunal, and most of those reviews do not succeed. The Tribunal's published caseload summaries are the source for this, and they are more informative than the Department's figures because they break outcomes down by type.

For the period 14 October 2024 to 31 March 2025, the Tribunal finalised 6,695 protection applications. It set aside the Department's decision in 801 matters, recorded as 12 per cent. It affirmed the refusal in 4,664 matters, recorded as 70 per cent. Applicants withdrew 897 matters, recorded as 13 per cent. A further 333 matters, recorded as 5 per cent, ended in a finding of no jurisdiction or another outcome. In the later summary covering July 2025, 2,370 matters were finalised, with a set aside rate of 9 per cent and an affirmed rate of 78 per cent.

Buried inside the affirmed figure is the number that matters most, and almost nobody quotes it. Of the 4,664 matters affirmed in the 2024 to 2025 period, 1,588 were dismissals. Of the 1,846 affirmed in July 2025, 1,007 were dismissals. A dismissal in this context generally means the applicant did not appear, or did not respond when the Tribunal required them to. Those cases were not lost on the merits. They were lost because nobody turned up to run them.

Read the numbers again with that in mind. In July 2025 the Tribunal finalised 2,370 matters, and 1,007 of them ended in a dismissal. The published set aside rate of 9 per cent is therefore not a measure of how persuasive protection claims are. It is a measure of a caseload in which a very large share of applicants were not engaged in their own review at all.

The other figure worth knowing is time. The Tribunal recorded a median of 175 weeks to finalise a protection matter in the July 2025 summary, with 41,864 applications still active. That is well over three years on the median case. Anyone considering a review needs to plan for a long wait, and needs to keep their contact details current with the Tribunal for the whole of it, because a missed notice is how a dismissal happens.

The deadline itself is unforgiving. An application for review of a protection visa refusal must be made within 28 calendar days of the day the applicant is taken to have received the decision. The Tribunal has no power to extend that period. The clock runs from deemed receipt, not from the day the letter was actually opened. If a refusal has landed, the deadline for a protection visa refusal review is the first thing to calculate, before anything else.

Why grant rates by nationality mislead applicants

Grant rates broken down by country of origin are the most quoted and least useful figures in this area, because they describe a population and an applicant is not a population. The Department's monthly updates list lodgements by country, and it is easy to find commentary attaching a grant rate to a nationality. Applicants then reason from it directly. Someone from a country with a low published rate concludes there is no point applying. Someone from a country with a high rate concludes the visa is close to automatic.

Both conclusions are wrong, for the same reason. The refugee definition in section 5H of the Migration Act, and the well founded fear test in section 5J, are applied to the individual. Nationality is relevant only as the starting point for identifying the country against which the risk is assessed. Two people from the same country, with the same passport, can receive opposite decisions on the same day, because one can show a personal profile that attracts harm and the other cannot.

Country of origin information is the bridge between the two. It is used to test whether the claimed risk is consistent with conditions actually reported in that country, whether the state is able and willing to provide protection, and whether relocation within the country is a reasonable answer to the claim. Section 36(2B) sets out those three limits on complementary protection expressly. A claim that is individually credible can still fail because the country information shows effective state protection, or a safe relocation option. A claim from a country with a poor published rate can succeed because the applicant falls within a narrow profile that the country information supports.

This is why claims that turn on a personal characteristic are decided so differently from one file to the next. Whether the claim concerns religious persecution, sexual orientation or gender identity, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, the question is never what happens to people from that country in general. It is what would happen to this applicant, with this history, on return now.

There is one further trap. Where the refugee criterion in section 36(2)(a) is not met, complementary protection under section 36(2)(aa) may still be available. It applies where there is a real risk of significant harm on return, and section 36(2A) defines significant harm as a closed list. A country based grant rate collapses both pathways into one number and tells you nothing about which one your facts engage.

What actually decides a protection visa application

Protection visa applications are decided on credibility, on the fit between the claim and the statutory test, and on the country information available about the risk. Those three things carry the outcome. They are not captured by any published rate, and they are where the real work sits.

Credibility comes first, because a protection claim usually rests on events that cannot be proved with documents. The decision maker assesses whether the account is consistent over time, whether it holds up when tested, and whether the applicant's explanation of gaps and inconsistencies is plausible. Inconsistency is not fatal on its own, and decision makers are required to consider explanations. But an account that changes between the written statement, the protection visa interview and the Tribunal hearing is very difficult to repair afterwards.

Identity is the other early gate. Sections 91W and 91WA of the Migration Act deal with identity documents and bogus documents, and they allow a decision maker to draw adverse conclusions where an applicant cannot explain a failure to produce reasonable evidence of identity, or has relied on a false document. These provisions are applied strictly. A claim that is otherwise sound can come apart on an unexplained document problem.

Then comes the legal fit. Section 5J requires a well founded fear of persecution for a Convention reason, and it includes a carve out that means an applicant is not expected to modify their behaviour to avoid harm. Section 36(2A) defines significant harm for complementary protection as a closed list, and section 36(2B) excludes the claim where relocation is reasonable, where state protection is available, or where the risk is faced by the population generally. Many refusals turn on one of those three exclusions rather than on disbelief. The applicant is believed, and still refused, because the claim does not engage the section.

Two practical points are worth correcting here, because both are widely misunderstood. Condition 8503, the no further stay condition, does not prevent a protection visa application. Schedule 8 carves protection visas out expressly, and conditions 8534 and 8535 carry the same carve out. No waiver is needed. Similarly, the bar in section 48, which applies after a refusal or cancellation, does not prevent a protection visa application, because protection visas remain available. The bar that does bite is section 48A, which prevents a second protection visa application after one has been refused. Only the Minister can lift it, using the personal power in section 48B.

Judicial review is not a third chance to argue the facts

Judicial review does not reconsider whether you should get a visa. The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia can only decide whether the decision was affected by jurisdictional error, meaning whether the decision maker followed the correct legal procedures and applied the law correctly. The Court has said this plainly. It cannot reassess whether the visa should be granted, it generally cannot receive new evidence about the facts of the claim, and it cannot grant the visa itself. Where it finds error, the usual outcome is that the matter goes back to the Tribunal to be decided again according to law.

That distinction is why people who treat judicial review as another appeal are so often disappointed. A Tribunal decision that reads as harsh, or that reaches a conclusion the applicant considers plainly wrong on the evidence, is not reviewable for that reason alone. The question is legal error, not unfairness in the ordinary sense of the word.

The deadline is 35 days from the date of the migration decision. That is the date of the decision itself, which is often not the date on the notification letter, and getting this wrong is a common and expensive mistake. The Court can extend the period, but an extension must be sought in the application and the reasons for needing it must be explained. It is not automatic.

Anyone weighing up judicial review should also weigh up what success looks like. A remittal is a return to the Tribunal, with the same evidence, for a fresh decision. It is a second opportunity to have the claim decided lawfully. It is not a grant.

What an applicant can actually control

The published rates are outside your control. Four things are not, and they are where attention belongs.

The first is the statement of claims. This is the document that defines the case, and everything afterwards is tested against it. A statement that sets out events in sequence, with dates and names where they are known, and that explains honestly what is not remembered or cannot be evidenced, is far easier to defend than one written to sound compelling.

The second is consistency. The application, the interview and any later hearing must tell one story. Where the account has to change, because something was misunderstood or omitted, the change should be identified and explained at the earliest opportunity rather than discovered by the decision maker.

The third is the deadline. Twenty eight days for the Tribunal, with no power to extend, and 35 days for the Court, with an extension available only on application. These are the deadlines that end cases before anyone reaches the merits.

The fourth is engagement. The Tribunal's own figures show how much of the affirmed caseload is made up of dismissals rather than decisions on the merits. Keeping contact details current, opening correspondence, and appearing when required are not legal skills. They are the difference between a case that gets decided and a case that gets dismissed.

How My Migration Lawyers approaches a protection visa matter

My Migration Lawyers cannot tell you what a decision maker will do with your claim, and no lawyer who is being straight with you will. What a lawyer can do is make sure the case that goes in is the strongest honest version of your account, and that it is put in the form the legislation actually requires.

In practice that means identifying at the outset which limb is being run, the refugee criterion in section 36(2)(a) or complementary protection in section 36(2)(aa), and whether both are available. It means drafting the statement of claims so the events line up with the elements the decision maker must find. It means reading the country of origin information before the interview rather than after the refusal, so that the foreseeable questions about state protection and relocation are dealt with in the material instead of being answered under pressure on the day. It means checking the identity position under sections 91W and 91WA early, while a gap can still be explained. And it means calculating the review deadline from deemed receipt the moment a refusal arrives.

Protection decisions turn on findings of fact about events in another country, and reasonable decision makers can differ on those findings. What preparation does is remove the avoidable ways a case is lost, which on the Tribunal's own numbers is a large share of them.

The firm acts for applicants at the application stage, at the interview, on review, and on judicial review. If you want your circumstances looked at properly before you decide what to do next, you can request a consultation with a migration lawyer or read more about how the firm acts in protection visa matters.