Partner visas — subclasses 309/100 (offshore) and 820/801 (onshore) — remain two-step paths to permanent residency. With the 309/100 route, the applicant must be outside Australia when applying; the 820/801 route applies when the applicant is already in Australia, and they can stay on a bridging visa while the visa is processed. For processing times, the temporary 820 visa can take about 21–34 months, and 309 takes roughly 21–31 months as per current global processing time lines. Permanent stage visa applications (801 and 100) become available two years after the temporary visa is lodged. 

Child visas, primarily subclass 101 (offshore) and 802 (onshore), allow dependent children to migrate to Australia to live with their sponsoring parent. Eligibility requires that at least one parent is an Australian citizen, permanent resident, or eligible New Zealand citizen, and generally that the sponsoring parent is living in Australia or intends to live in Australia once the child visa is granted. The child must be under 18, or a full-time student aged 18–25 who is financially dependent, or a child with a disability. They must also be single and not in a partner relationship. Processing times typically range from 16–27 months, depending on the subclass and individual circumstances.

Parent visas are more complicated: the non-contributory parent visa (subclass 103 or aged parent 804) can have very long waiting times — historically, this has stretched to decades. The Contributory Parent visas (subclass 143 for permanent and 173 for temporary) are faster in queue compared to 103/804, but still long: for example, as of June 2021, contributory parent visa processing was about 5.3 years on average. For newer applications, estimates from released documents suggest around 14 years for some contributory parent streams.