Our passport is the world’s most expensive. We’re getting ripped off

April 20, 2026 — 5:00am

Why do Australians get charged so much for our passports? Ours is the world’s most expensive, and we’re caught, aren’t we?

According to Adam Glezer from Consumer Champion, “the government knows people have no choice but to get a passport if they want to travel overseas, and in my opinion they’ve taken advantage of that fact, hoping it wouldn’t attract much scrutiny.”

Why is our passport so expensive?

One of the reasons often cited by DFAT for the high cost of our passport is its enhanced security features, which make it difficult to forge. It’s true that the Australian passport is one of the world’s most secure, in the same class as the German and Singaporean passports.

So how does our current “R series” passport stack up against its Singaporean counterpart? Both are made of polycarbonate, which is durable and tear-resistant, both have embedded and encrypted biometric chips which store photo and personal data. The photo page in the Australian passport is made from laser-engraved polycarbonate, which makes it much harder to peel or tamper with, and it includes a transparent window with a secondary image of the holder. There’s also a tactile element in the form of a raised map of Australia. The same page on the Singapore passport is also polycarbonate and the photo has a window lock, which changes the photo from a positive to a negative when tilted. It also has a multiple laser image in the shape of Singapore map.

Other features of the Australian passport include complex watermarks and fine-line printing based on Indigenous artwork, a laser-perforated passport number through all pages, hidden designs that are only revealed under ultraviolet light, and landscapes that transform into night scenes with native animals. These features are difficult to replicate, yet easy for border officials to verify.

On the Singaporean passport, laser-generated images that change depending on viewing angle, embossed tactile designs for physical verification, and complex designs featuring iconic Singapore landmarks make high-quality counterfeiting difficult, even for sophisticated actors.

Both the Singaporean and Australian versions are uber-passports, rock solid, technologically sophisticated and the ones you want to have in your pocket, but one crucial difference between them is the cost. Via an online application, the Singapore passport costs $S70 ($77), less than one-fifth of the cost of an Australian passport. The Singapore government can produce one of the world’s most secure passports for a fraction of what it costs the Australian government to do the same. Or perhaps the real cost of producing an Australian passport is nothing like the $422 that we pay for it, and the government simply trousers the difference.

Why our passport gets more expensive with every passing year

Something that sets the Australian passport apart from most others: the passport fee increases every year on January 1. That mechanism was established under the Australian Passports Act 2005, which prescribed that passport fees would be automatically adjusted annually in line with the Consumer Price Index.

However, the rate of increase in passport fees does not march in lockstep with inflation. According to Australian Taxation Office figures, over the 10-year period from 2016, the CPI has increased by a cumulative total of 35 per cent. Over that same period the cost of an Australian passport has increased by 66 per cent. That’s partly explained by the one-off application fees that were added to the CPI figure in January 2017, January 2019 and July 2024, which the government has allowed itself to add on top of the increase determined by the CPI.

In 2024 passport fees jumped by 15 per cent on July 1 to fund upgrades and maintain Australia’s “super-secure R Series” passport program. In the first two months of 2026 Australia’s CPI increased by 3.7 per cent. If that figure remains constant for the whole year, an Australian passport will increase to $438 in 2027.

To put it all in perspective, in 1988 an Australian passport cost just $66. If it had increased only in line with inflation, it would cost just $189.90 today. Or in the case of the passport price in 2001 – $132 – it would cost just $252.33

Is our passport delivering value for money?

According to the latest Henley index, a list of the world’s most powerful passports based on the number of countries passport holders can visit without obtaining a prior visa, an Australian passport will get you into 182 countries visa-free. That puts it into equal seventh in the rankings, along with Latvia, New Zealand, Canada and Slovakia, but behind 26 other passports, including Irish, British, Polish and Maltese. At the very top of the table, for another year, are Singaporeans, whose bargain-priced passport gets them into 192 countries without a visa.

No doubting that the Australian passport is a superb piece of technology, secure, sophisticated and widely trusted. But when countries like Singapore and Germany (passport cost $174) can produce documents of comparable quality that open more doors at a lower cost, the question shifts from security to value. Australians don’t just pay more, they pay more every year, and the cost outpaces the rate of inflation. A passport may be non-negotiable, but the price we pay for it shouldn’t be beyond scrutiny. At $422 and rising, the issue isn’t whether our passport is good, it’s why we’re asked to pay so much for it.