Australians looking to travel overseas are having their plans cast into doubt following lengthy delays in passport processing.
Officials say they are dealing with thousands of applications a day - including 16,417 on Tuesday - with many people rushing to get passports following two years of border closures.
The government has said an extra 250 staff will be brought in to help with the backlog, but it's not just would-be holidaymakers who are facing problems.
Sreenith Kulangarath spent 10 hours in a queue for the passport office in Sydney on Tuesday, eager to join his wife in India after her father died on 1 June.
Sreenith Kulangarath spent 10 hours queuing at the Sydney passport office on Tuesday.
“My son’s passport has expired. I applied for a new passport for him on 5 May and haven’t yet received it yet,” he told SBS News.
“My wife is devastated – she needs my support. I want to be with her and my mother-in-law in India, but I can’t travel without my son.
“The funeral was on Friday and I couldn’t be with my wife.”
The passports of thousands of Australians expired during the COVID-19 pandemic when international travel was prohibited.
As Australian borders started re-opening towards the end of 2021, the Australian Passport Office experienced a surge in the number of applications.
Sreenith Kulangarath with his wife Sandhya and six-year-old son Vedansh.
According to the department's website, a new passport “can be issued in less than two business days if there is a compassionate or compelling reason, such as the death or serious illness of an immediate family member”.
It was on those grounds that Mr Kulangarath filled out the priority processing form on 2 June. The priority service costs $225, on top of the $155 application fee.
“I was told my son’s passport will be ready in two days. I was told I will receive an email about my passport and how to collect it on Monday,” Mr Kulangarath said.
Long queues outside the passport office in Sydney.
Mr Kulangarath said he was not the only person in the queue outside the passport office experiencing these hardships.
“There was a lady behind me in the queue the other day, who was in a similar situation," Mr Kulangarath said.
“She applied for a new passport at the post office a few weeks ago but then her father died in England.
“She told me she came to the passport office to expedite her passport so she could go back to England to be with her family, but found out her application was never received by the passport office.”
Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Tim Watts said the "current delays in passport applications, and the long waits to get in touch with the Passport Office, are unacceptable".
He added: "This problem was predictable and is the result of the previous government dropping the ball and failing to properly plan for the surge in passport applications when borders re-opened.
"Before the pandemic, there were around 7,000-9,000 applications per day. Currently, there are around 10,000-12,000, partly because many of the applications that weren’t lodged during the pandemic are being lodged now.
"It shouldn’t be Australians who suffer the consequences of these failures."
He added the government was "working with DFAT to fix this by urgently increasing numbers of processing and call centre staff as quickly as staff can be recruited and trained".
Senator Simon Birmingham, shadow minister for foreign affairs, told 2GB on Tuesday: "You would hope that every effort will be made to make sure that there are extra hours, extra support in terms of the phone calls and systems there.
"There may well be limits in terms of how many passports can physically be processed with those high levels of security checks and verifications of documents that have to occur, particularly for first passport applications and children.
"But ultimately they should be making sure that calls are being answered."
