On the Monday after the 2022 federal election, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) deputy secretary emailed another senior staff member with concerns about the backlog of passport applications.
“As you know, there is a very high level of demand for passports,” deputy secretary Craig Maclachlan wrote to assistant secretary Marco Salvio on 21 May.
The demand had gotten so bad, he said, that the foreign minister’s office had been bombarded with 10 to 20 calls a day with people trying to get help. And once the media started reporting in early June about the widespread delay, they got even worse.
New emails obtained by Crikey reveal that the incoming government scrambled to respond to an influx of passport applications that had begun under the Morrison government after 1.8 million Australians let their passports expire while international borders were closed.
A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong pointed the finger at the Morrison government for failure to prepare.
“Shortly after assuming office, the foreign minister and assistant foreign minister were informed of passport processing delays as a result of the Liberals and Nationals’ failure to plan for a predictable post-COVID surge in applications,” they said in response to Crikey’s questions.
Former foreign minister Marise Payne’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Emails show that DFAT staff briefed Wong’s staff on the issue shortly after taking office.
“Would you be able to send through a soft copy of the A3 Passport brief you provided us last week?” an unnamed Wong staffer emailed deputy secretary Maclachlan on June 7.
Before Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts sent out the government’s first media release acknowledging the delays, DFAT staff discussed how to share the government’s response while the mechanics were still being hammered out.
“I think you can add ‘minimum’ to the line about 250 staff being onboarded,” Maclachlan responded to a draft version of Watts’ release.
“We are going to have to work out with Services Australia the detail over the next 24 hours. Anything more is difficult.”
Meanwhile, the increasing media coverage of the delays only exacerbated the problem. Figures circulated to DFAT staff show that daily passport applications spiked from 11,054 on June 6 to 16,417 on June 7 — a record daily figure that had never previously been above 15,000.
The emails also show how staff debated how to speak to the public’s frustrations with the hold-ups. When DFAT’s Tanya Bennett recommended including travel advice as part of their messaging around the delays, another unnamed staff member emailed back saying that such advice might seem a bit tone deaf.
“I take your point re the smartraveller messaging opportunity, but I think this will be counterproductive to be telling people in relation to their frustrations with APO delays that they should be travel ready,” they wrote.
Able to get the sex workers into the country for the criminal people traffickers but only good at snatching kids from their beds at midnight
The passport debacle must be assumed to be a short term problem caused by uninterested (unskilled) politicians with poor reaction to a very unusual event.
The real story which I urge Crikey to pursue is the outsourcing of Pacific Nations visa applications to Fiji with an abysmal processing record.
Genuine visa applicants are being immorally refused with no basis of reality and no ability to answer incorrect assumptions with non-refundable fees attached to each and every application.
In one case of which I know, the applicant was requesting a visa to enter Australia for private education, was fully funded with accommodation arranged, references and a guarantor organised, yet was refused a Visa. Not once, but twice!
The first refusal was with the explanatory reason being he did not have work ties to his home country, and his family ties were insufficient.
This is despite him providing his most recent payslip (days old) that showed he had full time employment with a major company in his country, and his application detailed he had a wife and four children awaiting him at home.
He obtained a letter from his employer (a multinational company) detailing his three year employment history and the fact he continued to be employed, had been granted leave for the education trip and they intended to continue his employment without a doubt, a guarantor in Australia and character references from many reputable entities and re-applied for the visa.
The second refusal ignored the previous reasons entirely and added a single new and previously unmentioned reason being the applicant did not own property. At no point did the visa application process ask about ownership of property, nor was it used as a reason in the first application refusal.
The reality of the matter is that the applicant did (and still does) own property. Four separate parcels of land for that matter, as well as two houses!
So the burning question is,
“why does Australia issue free visas to many English, American, French, German … in fact many A team countries which results in many over-stayers who do NOT have jobs, do NOT have a wife and children back home and do NOT have property, when our nearest neighbours struggle so desperately yet have all those attributes and pay a fee for the privilege“?
Australian politicians wonder why we are losing traction with our Pacific neighbours, allowing China to walk in.
Australian politicians wonder why we are termed racist?
Australian politicians are delivering chest-beating new Pacific visa’s.
What for, when they can’t functionally assess the genuine applicants they currently have dangling on strings of fantasy/
No one should be surprised. Was the Morrison government prepared for anything? The most incompetent government in all of my 70 + years.
Another example of the imported ‘Wrecking Crew’ (Tom Franks) strangling budgets, headcounts and ignoring management incompetence to then demand mergers, cuts or sub contracting out…..
It is not only the office processing of passports that is slow, I had to renew my parents passports for them recently using the online application. It was the worst application that I have ever had the displeasure to use. Incredibly slow and frustrating, consistently failing with requests timing out (this was not a one off outage, I tried over several days). I have been a web developer for fifteen years and have rarely seen anything so incompetent. The web app makes a request back to the server on every form field being filled, which, more often than not, fails. The department’s site had some disclaimer that they process over 7000 applications a day, that is a pathetically small number to bring a system to it’s knees, do they run it on an old 486 in a back office? Even the figure of 16000 cited in the article is considered a small number of requests to handle.
I hope you are not expecting anything from the Public Service to actually be fit for purpose? If so, prepare to be disillusioned. The APS IT Strategy (there isn’t one) is a joke and if they were a business in the real world, their IT staff would be seeking employment elsewhere.