DFAT warns passport waiting times longer for children due to extra verification

The minimum six-week waiting time for Australian passport renewals is likely to be much longer where children are concerned because of the ‘extra verification’ required.

Waiting times for Australian passports are likely to be even longer for children, the department of foreign affairs and trade has revealed. Picture: iStock

The minimum six-week waiting time for Australian passport renewals is likely to be much longer where children are concerned because of the “extra verification” required.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has conceded some passport applications are taking much longer to process, despite a doubling of staff that has helped lift production rates to 12,000 a day.

A DFAT spokesman said “most applications” were being processed within the Australian Passport Office’s recommended minimum six-weeks turnaround time but some were “more complex and took longer”.

“Of those falling outside this time frame the majority are child and first-time adult applications,” the spokesman said.

“These can take longer to process because all supporting documents need to be verified.”

He said in the case of a child’s passport, full parent consent was required before the passport could be issued.

“If they are lodged without the consent of all persons with parental responsibility, it will take longer to process,” the spokesman said.

“In addition, incomplete applications can take longer than six weeks to process and the time it takes to process is dependent on when we receive all supporting information.”

His comments provided little comfort to Sunshine Coast mother Agnieszka Swiatlowska, who applied for a passport for her son on July 7, and was still waiting to receive it.

Ms Swiatlowska said she had twice been forced to delay travel to Europe planned for early October and was at her “wit’s end”.

“Extending the time (for processing) to eight or nine weeks is understandable but to 15 weeks is unacceptable,” she said.

“It is my son’s third or fourth passport so I don’t get why it would take so long. All consent and documents were totally correct and no one from the department contacted me nor anyone else on the application seeking clarification.”

Another family from Sydney was facing an anxious wait for their children’s passports, with flights booked to the US on October 29.

The father, who did not want to be named, said the passport applications for both children, aged 9 and 11, were made on July 28.

“They have full parental consent. When I lodged the applications at the post office, the person went through all the documents to make sure they were all correct,” he said.

“We heard this week my daughter’s passport is coming but we are still waiting on my son’s even though they were lodged the same day. We are supposed to fly out a week tomorrow and I’m getting really stressed.”

The DFAT spokesman said they were unable to comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.

Extended processing times were previously attributed to a huge backlog of passport applications lodged late last year and early this year following the reopening of international borders.

In the almost two years of borders being closed in Australia, around 2 million passports expired, with many residents reluctant to pay $308 to have them renewed until overseas travel was once again available.

Since June, more than 1 million passports had been issued, at a rate of about 12,000 a day, up 30 per cent on pre-pandemic volumes.