Australian passport
| Australian passport | |
|---|---|
The front cover of a current Australian biometric passport | |
The polycarbonate photo page of a current R series Australian passport | |
| Type | Passport |
| Issued by | Australian Passport Office (DFAT) Australia Post |
| First issued |
|
| In circulation | 15 million (2025) |
| Purpose | Identification & travel |
| Valid in | All countries |
| Eligibility | Australian citizenship |
| Expiration |
|
| Cost |
|
An Australian passport is a travel document issued by the Commonwealth of Australia to individuals holding any form of Australian nationality. The document facilitates access to consular assistance from Australian embassies around the world, and are issued by the Australian Passport Office, an agency of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Australia Post. As of February 2026, Australian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 182 countries and territories, ranking the passport seventh in the world for travel freedom according to the Henley Passport Index.
Since 24 October 2005, Australia has issued only biometric passports, called ePassports, which have an embedded microchip that contains the same personal information that is on the colour photo page of the passport, including a digitised photograph. As all previous passports have now expired, all Australian passports are now biometric. SmartGates have been installed in Australian airports to allow Australian ePassport holders and ePassport holders of several other countries to clear immigration controls more rapidly, and facial recognition technology has been installed at immigration gates.
Since 1988 over a million Australian passports have been issued annually, and it reached 1.4 million in 2007, and increasing towards a projected 3 million annually by 2021. As of May 2023, an Australian passport was regarded as "the most expensive travel document in the world", at a cost of AUD$325 per passport. Passports cost A$422 as of 1 January 2026. As of late-2023, approximately 14.2 million Australian citizens (or just over 53% of the population) possessed a valid Australian passport.