Our passports just got even more expensive. It’s a rip-off

Need a new passport? As of yesterday, it’s going to cost you $52 more. It has been the practice of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to increase the passport fee on January 1 each year, in line with the inflation rate.

This year, as well as hiking the cost by $21 on January 1, 2024, the government increased the cost of a 10-year passport to $398 as of July 1. What cost $325 in 2023 will now cost $73 more, an increase of 22 per cent.

According to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, “this one-off increase is all about making sure that we can resource our passport systems and make them modern and fit for purpose”.

Australia’s passport is one of the world’s most expensive. A 10-year British passport costs £88.50 ($168) for online applications. The United States’ version is $US130 ($195). A 10-year Canadian passport costs $C260 ($284), and there hasn’t been a price increase since 2018.

In the 2022-23 financial year, Australia’s Passport Office issued more than 3.1 million passports. If the same number is issued in the coming 2024-25 financial year, that will tip $1.23 billion into government coffers.

The Passport Office claims the current R Series “combines visual elements and advanced technologies to make it one of the world’s most secure and beautiful travel documents”.

Are we to believe that an American or British passport, which cost $200 less than our own, or the Singapore passport, which costs just $S80 ($89), are less secure than our own?

In an audit published in February 2024, the auditor-general took the government to task, reporting: “DFAT has not been efficiently delivering passport services. While the department has timeframe targets for processing applications, those targets are not customer-focused and are not being consistently met … the average cost to produce a passport has increased more than the increase in the price of labour; and staff efficiency, which was improving up until the COVID-19 pandemic, has deteriorated since the international border was reopened.”