Staff boost to end ‘unacceptable’ Australian passport renewal delays

As wait times to renew Australian passports balloon, Labor announces urgent injection of passport processing, call centre workers.

Waiting times to renew Australian passports have ballooned. Picture: Supplied

The government is urgently increasing the number of people taking calls at the Australian Passport Office in the wake of “unacceptable” delays.

Assistant spokesman for foreign affairs Tim Watts said the wait time to get in touch with the passport office and process an application had blown out under the Coalition, with Labor today announcing an immediate injection of extra staff.

“The Minister for Foreign Affairs and I are working with DFAT to fix this, by urgently increasing numbers of processing and call centre staff as quickly as staff can be recruited and trained,” Mr Watts said.

“To help deal with phone delays, we are standing up a new additional call centre with 35 staff this week and 35 more staff next week. And a minimum additional 250 staff will come on board over the next six weeks to process applications.”

Before the pandemic, there were around 7000 to 9000 applications per day, which has increased to around 10,000 to 12,000 a day.

Mr Watts said many applications that weren’t lodged during the pandemic were being lodged now, creating significant backlog.

“Yesterday, the number of applications reached a daily record of 16,417,” he said.

“This problem was predictable and is the result of the previous government dropping the ball and failing to properly plan for the surge in passport applications when borders reopened.

“It shouldn’t be Australians who suffer the consequences of these failures. While it will take some time to get back on track, we will continue to work with DFAT to make sure the required resources are delivered.”