Australian passport

An Australian passport is a travel document issued by the Commonwealth of Australia to individuals holding any form of Australian nationality. It grants the bearer international passage in accordance with visa requirements and serves as both a form of identification and proof of Australian citizenship. It also facilitates access to consular assistance from Australian embassies around the world. Passports are issued in accordance with the Australian Passports Act 2005 by the Australian Passport Office, an agency of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). As of July 2023, Australian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 186 countries and territories, ranking the passport sixth 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. As of late-2023, approximately 14.2 million Australian citizens (or just over 53% of the population) possessed a valid Australian passport.