The words 'Australian Passport' replaced 'British Passport' on the cover of an Australian passport in 1949. In 1950, 30,000 Australian passports were issued. Fifty years later in 1999–2000, this number had risen to nearly 1,450,000. Their production accounted for 37 tonnes of paper, 95,500 metres of thread, 69,000 metres of gold foil and 1,100 litres of glue.
In the 2001-2002 financial year, 986,316 passports were issued. The horrific terrorist attacks in the United States led to a significant decline in passport applications during this period. For the first time since the mid-1990s, fewer than one million passports were issued.
On average, an Australian passport is issued every 27.5 seconds. Originally passports were hand written. Technology now plays a vital part in passport production. In 2001 the Australian passport was first produced using leading edge scanning and character recognition technology.
Today’s passports may look very different, but some of the key changes are less obvious at first glance:
- the 'X' series passport issued in 1917 is one of the earliest passports. It was during World War I that monitoring and identifying those crossing international borders became critical to the security of Australia and its allies;
- the War Precautions Act 1914–15 required that all persons over 16 years of age, on leaving the Commonwealth, possess a passport;
- in 1949 two types of passport were issued:
- B Series passports were issued (within Australia only) to British subjects who were not Australian citizens.
- C Series passports were issued only to Australian citizens.
- before 1983, a married woman’s passport application had to be authorised by her husband;
- in 1984, Australian passports included machine readable lines and were the first to have a laminate built into the document;
- in 1986, the introduction of Single Identity passports meant children could no longer be included on their parent’s passport;
- until 1988, a woman could apply for and receive a passport in her married name, before she was actually married.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's goal is to be at the forefront of passport technology, security and customer service. We have developed new technology and processes to further improve all aspects of our products and service.
Since 1983, the department's partnership with Australia Post has enabled Australian citizens to apply for passports at most Australia Post outlets.
The Australian Passport Information Service (APIS) is operated on behalf of the department by Centrelink and provides information to passport applicants.
Passport applications are now scanned directly into the passport system using Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).
The department has patented the digital printing of passport photographs onto the glue side of the laminate—a key security feature.
