About 40,000 Australians are yet to receive their passports after six weeks, as frustrated travellers ask why the process is so fraught despite a two-year lull at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Gympie mum Eleonora Manzi is leaving for a "really expensive, really important" trip to Italy in a week, and put a passport application in for her two children close to four months ago.
After contacting her local MP, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and calling the Australian Passport Office every week, the family's passports are only just ready to pick up.
She said she will head to Brisbane — a four hour round trip — to collect the passports later this week.
But while there was relief, she said the stress had been enormous.
"I waited [until] the six weeks mark and then at the end of July I start to get worried," she said.
"I started to call the Australian Passport Office and they were just keeping me kind of quiet, saying, 'We are going to escalate your passport, don't worry'.
"Then August came and still no passport."
She began calling once a week, then found a Facebook group with thousands of others in the same situation, including some forced to cancel flights due to passport delays.
"It's been a really, really stressful situation because I couldn't get excited to go on holiday, to get ready," she said.
"My kids were so excited, they asked me, 'When are we going to Italy?' and I was afraid to tell them, 'Oh we can't go because we couldn't get the passport in time'."
Lack of information
Ms Manzi said she could not understand how the passport office failed to improve its process while Australians were locked down at home during the pandemic.
"[The APO] should have got more organised after this coronavirus, expecting that a lot of people want to go away," she said.
During the passport issuing process, applicants are not told the status of their application until they call or email.
Ms Manzi said even then, most reported being told their passports were being processed, but given no indication on when to expect them.
"You don't know how long it's going to be," Ms Manzi said.
"There is no tracking [for applicants], there's nothing, there's no news.
"And it's impossible they don't know. It's something that needs to be changed, definitely."
Calls for new system
Sunshine Coast mum Keeley Thistleton said despite applying months ago, her 18-month-old daughter Amity was still without a passport.
She agreed the system needed to change, saying once her application was sent off, there was no way of knowing when or if it would eventually turn up.
"There's literally nothing," she said.
"Do they even have a system that says exactly where it's at?
"Is that why they're losing track of so many, because they don't have a system in place?"
Ms Thistleton was also frustrated the passport office continued to tell applicants to expect a six-week wait.
"They should be telling people to wait six months to be honest," she said.
"It's honestly just a joke.
"It's just giving false hope to people or wasting people's money because they're booking holidays well in advance of six weeks, then they're not getting their passports on time."
270,000 passports in queue
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) estimated it would work through the total of 270,000 passports currently in its queue within five weeks.
But a spokesman admitted that one in eight, or about 40,000, Australians were already waiting longer.
"The majority are first-time adult and child applications," the spokesman said.
"These applications can take longer to process because all supporting documents need to be verified.
"Most applications are receiving their passports within this six-week timeframe."
DFAT blamed the delays on continued "unprecedented demand" after 1.8 million Australians chose not to renew their passports while international borders were closed.
In the past 12 months, it issued 1.5 million passports, more than two-and-a-half times the year before.
But it said it was still receiving up to 15,000 passport applications per weekday, close to double pre-COVID levels.
In the past 18 months, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has received 750 complaints about DFAT and its handling of passports.
The ABC posed questions to DFAT about upgrading or improving its passport process.
