Sydney passport office queue times to fall from six hours to 90 minutes

Eurydyka left home at 2am on Monday to join the queue outside the Sydney passport office. Two major changes should slash the wait time within days.

The wait time outside Sydney’s passport office for people desperately seeking information about delayed travelled documents should fall from six hours or more to 90 minutes by the end of this week.

Those queuing after getting a message that their passport is finally ready can expect to be on their way in 20 minutes compared to two hours in many cases.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the new targets stem from a collection process revamp and the arrival of extra staff.

From today, people who are picking up a passport will no longer go up to level 7 of the Sydney CBD office.

It’s understood there is limited space in that area, which is slowing things down even further.

Instead, the documents will be issued on the ground floor from a ‘pop-up site’.

People in line at the Sydney passport office on Monday. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Level 7 will then solely deal with inquiries from people queuing outside after applying up to 15 weeks ago. Many of the hold-ups are for children’s passports, which can involve extra checks.

Following a similar change to collections in Melbourne recently, wait times for people simply seeking information fell by about 75 per cent — from four hours to 60 minutes.

Eurydyka Beaman said the demand for passports was foreseeable. Picture: Jonathan Ng

A similar impact is expected in Sydney, which has had even longer queues. Some people have been camping overnight to be near the front of the line.

Numbers in the queue are also expected to drop because 70 call centre staff have been added, meaning that phones are now being answered, which was not the case previously.

Still, the telephone wait time on Monday was an estimated 90 minutes.

A further 330 call centre workers and 300 processing staff will start this week. By September, more than 1100 people will have joined.

A long line of people queuing outside of the Sydney Passport Office. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Outside the Sydney office on Monday, Eurydyka Beaman said she had been waiting on her son’s passport for 14 weeks.

Mrs Beaman’s family is due to fly to the US on Friday after outlaying $5500 on fares.

Having taken the day off from her job as a schoolteacher, she left Saratoga on the Central Coast at 2am to join the queue.

“If I knew this was going to take months and months I would have paid more money to expedite it,” Mrs Beaman said.

Mandy Fuller and her son Liam were also in the queue, after waiting more than six weeks for his passport.

Mrs Fuller, of Avoca on the Central Coast, said she had taken a day off work while Liam was missing school.

To be closer to the start of the line, they spent $250 on accommodation in Sydney on Sunday night.

Claudia Harris, 21, from Orange, outside Sydney Passport Office, at Henry Deane Plaza in June, 2022. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The Fullers are due to travel to Thailand next week after spending $5000 on flights and accommodation.

“If we don’t get the passport, the holiday’s not happening,” Mrs Fuller said.

A passport office employee was taking names and contact numbers of people in the queue and encouraging them to go home and await a call.

Few were persuaded to leave.

Mrs Fuller said the employee told her that she shouldn’t have booked an overseas holiday without valid passports for all travellers.

She said his comment — the first communication since the application was submitted — made her feel “angry”.

The passport office has been receiving up to 16,000 applications a day; before the pandemic, typical daily volumes were 7000 to 9000.

It’s understood about 80 per cent are currently being processed inside six weeks at the moment.

However, people who apply within two months of their departure date are being told to consider an “urgent” application, which carries an additional “priority processing fee” of $225.