Australians are waiting 60% longer than usual for their passport applications to be processed, as the reopening of the international border drives a huge jump in demand and a flood of calls to the passport office.
Guardian Australia can reveal the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has issued more than 275,000 new passports since 1 November – almost triple the number issued compared with the same period a year ago.
“Due to the increased demand [following the reopening of the international border] passports are currently taking longer to process,” a spokesperson for Dfat said.
“At present, processing times are, on average, around 16 business days, compared to within 10 business days previously.”
The spokesperson said this processing time was “well short of the timeframe the public are encouraged to renew their passport” – up to six weeks ahead of their planned international travel.
Australians have complained of long waits when phoning the passport office, or even having their calls disconnected, even as Dfat attempted to manage demand by hiring an extra 130 staff.
Several users contacted Dfat on social media to say they had applied for passports more than two months ago and had not yet received them – but in some cases the call centre was too busy to accept calls.
Dfat’s Twitter account has been replying to complaints about being unable to reach the call centre by providing an email address for the passport office.
It is understood Dfat has recruited 130 additional new staff, as well as returning large numbers of passport staff who had been on temporary redeployment to other roles while passport demand was low.
This move is believed to have bolstered the number of staff currently undertaking passport-related work to more than 600, which is similar to pre-pandemic staffing levels.
More staff are expected to be recruited between now and 2023 amid expectations of further increases in international travel.
The Dfat spokesperson said the number of passport applications currently in progress – 80,000 – was about 30,000 above pre-pandemic levels. “Dfat expects this to return to previous levels by February.”
Early in the pandemic, Guardian Australia reported that the disruption to overseas travel had resulted in a massive drop in Australian passport applications, a decline of about 400,000 in the first half of 2020.
That also meant the government missed out on tens of millions of dollars in application fee revenue.
Over the past 12 months, it is estimated about 1.8 million Australians have either put off renewing their expired passports or applying for a passport for the first time. The latter category includes new Australian citizens.
But the surge in applications has been driven by the progressive reopening of the international border, which began when the government allowed fully vaccinated Australian citizens and permanent residents to freely travel abroad from 1 November.
Officials at the Australian Passport Office (APO) had anticipated a need to prepare for a “spike in applications”.
In an operational briefing to the new Dfat secretary, Kathryn Campbell, in July 2021, departmental officials said: “A key challenge for the APO is lower passport demand, which will likely continue for the remainder of 2021.”
The briefing document – obtained under freedom of information laws – said the APO “has a well-developed plan in place aimed at bringing forward some of this pent-up demand and managing a future spike in applications when travel restrictions ease”.
It is understood this plan included sending out email and SMS messages to more than 2.2 million Australians over the past year to remind them that their passport has either expired or is about to expire.
The department has also been in touch with travel and tourism industry firms to enlist their help in urging customers to renew their passports early.
