PASSPORTS: Cost of Australian passports to rise twice in 2024.
If your Australian passport is close to requiring renewal – get it done this year before the price rise!
Australia has one of the world’s most expensive passports but one of the sixth most powerful according to this list. And that price is only going to go up by AU$65 in 2024.
Content of this Post:
Two price rises
In fact passports will increase in cost twice during 2024. The first rise is for the usual ‘cost of living’ increase, which will see theTthe standard 10-year passport move from AU$325 to AU$340.
The second rise, which will occur at the end of the 2024 financial year on 1 July, is a fundraising measure announced by Jim Chalmers, the treasurer and will add a further AU$50, taking the cost of a standard 10-year, 34 page passport up to AU$ 400. This will raise a little over AU$115 million per year over the next three years to cover the cost of our new super secure ‘R Series‘ passports.
New more secure passports
The New ‘R Series’ passports have a load of new security features. The rollout of these new passports to replace the 2014 ‘P’ series commenced in September 2022.
Some of the new security features they are telling us about are the raised map of Australia over the portrait (see above), another portrait of the owner in a transparent window, and an antenna for the embedded chip on the photo page (see above).
There are other elements that are only visible under ultra-violet light as illustrated in the image below
A visual journey
The R Series passport takes you on a visual journey around Australia. The inside front and back cover pages represent the East and West Australian coastlines, and the visa pages showcase 17 iconic landscapes from across the country.
www.passports.gov.au
The pages which will actually receive your visa stamps have one of 17 Australian locations, along with further black light features (see below)
And there is a recognition of Australian indigenous artists with the inclusion of artworks by Uta Uta Tjangala and Michael Nelson Jagamara AM, unfortunately both no longer with us.
If you want to know more, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a video of the whole R Series box and dice here: https://multimedia.dfat.gov.au/embeds/public/2E63E9FBD54E452A%20AF311BAE36BA78B6/
2PAXfly Takeout
It will be another couple of years before I need to renew mine, so I will need to be satisfied with the old ‘P’ series for a few more years. Well, unless I run out of pages – which could happen.
I thought this might be my last passport, presuming everything would be heading digital. But like hover travel in the Jetsons, I think we are still a decade or two away from that!
Australia has one of the world’s most expensive passports. Maybe Venezuela is more but I don’t think Canberra thinks it is in the same league as Caracas.
Strength of the passport is not an excuse. Several strong passports are cheap. The U.S. Passport Agency makes a profit from passport fees. Australia probably does unless they waste money on expenses.
Hi Derek,
You are correct, Australia has one of the most expensive passports in the world – only Lichtenstien beats it at
US$264 [https://www.passport-collector.com/global-passport-fees/]. I think the government weighs what the market will bear. With Australians love of travel that appears to be quite a lot. I’m intrigued that the USA makes a profit. I can only think that is a result of their population size, which is more than 10 times Australia’s.