Australian Apostille Extortion at $98 per page!

[ethernet]

Apostilles cost $98 per page at the Passports office. Is this the most expensive in the world? It is also a government monopoly as Notaries may 'bundle' many pages , but still needs a $98 Passport office chop. In the USA it can be often be done for USD3 -20 per page. The govt was seriously embarrassed when they upped the fees and that the office may stamp related for the same. In Jan 2024 I can confirm this is NOT the case. This also causes issues - Apostille of a passport photocopy - because I have an aversion to posting my passport overseas - that being Australia also seems to have the most expensive passports in the word, especially 'lost' ones.

The UK cost is GBP 45 GBP or 35 GBP for a digital apostille.

 

[odysseus]

Passports are, as are many other things here, so why would apostilles be different?

The one thing is you only need them rarely if ever so the extra impost is less of a deal.

 

[ethernet]

You hear words that Australia is both a global and multicultural society. That 'International Benchmarking' is the way to go. You were taught at school that monopolies' are bad. Monopoly fees for essential services are offensive to 'Public Service'. Taxation is a form of economic conscription. Lots of people in Australia have foreign ties to elsewhere. $98 to rubber stamp one page is excessive any way you look at it. So is $68 for a photocopy of your birth certificate from a BDM registry. Work on the assumption that the Passport Office is a profit center used to subsidize other loss making cost centers - like detention center and legal aid.

<redacted>

 

[moa999]

The Australian passport has less 'value and freedoms' than certain other nations.

One country below NZ (think the difference is Chile)

And five below the highest rank Euro country
(Which is mostly due to some of the former USSR/ stans only having visa free travel for Euro countries).

Plenty of far worse passports to have.

 

[ethernet]

While drug couriers mostly deserve to die, the power or lets just say the effectiveness of Australia to free the convicted is - miles less than Germany or USA. Visa entry fees are another low point for Australian passports - even in Asian countries close by - that we send a lot of aid money to. Time that DFAT outsources some passports to say Singapore that seems many times more productive. Somehow I don't think they would allow China (their passports are USD $18) to streamline the extreme DFAT inefficiency.

DFAT needs to carefully consider that the EU citizens will be getting ID Cards on 2nd August. Ref: ReadID Blog
So it is time to reexamine the Australia Card 'Thing'. This will kill off all the ID parasites that Australia is trying to preserve.

 

[AustSerbKor]

Australia charged me more in apostille fees than Serbia charged me for citizenship. I also needed an apostilled marriage certificate from Korea. I logged into the Korean Supreme Court (the registrar of family records), requested the document and sent it to the apostilles app and printed the marriage certificate and apostille at home in Brisbane in 5 minutes. The cost was 5 minutes, ink and 2 pieces of paper as Korea does not charge online certificates and apostilles. Australia blaming separate state registrars may catch up by 2035, but I'm sure the $98 fee will increase to offset the cost of going digital ignoring IT needs to be upgraded anyway and digital will reduce wage costs.

 

[muppet]

Australia clearly is operating on a cost-recovery basis for this non-essential service.

I’m fine with it.

 

[JohnK]

Wife just got a Thai 10 year Passport for 2000 baht with 50 baht express post. She thought that was expensive.

Wife has Australian citizenship interview in 4 weeks. If she passes I think Australian passport is ~AUD400.

I know we're a small market in Australia but I struggle to understand taxes, duties, fees in this country. Stop handing out freebies and make cost lower and same for all.

 

[SydneySwan]

Wife has Australian citizenship interview in 4 weeks. If she passes I think Australian passport is ~AUD400.

A 10 year Australian passport is A$346. A Thai passport is about A$85. Not sure of relative purchasing power but I would hazard a guess that in those terms the prices are quite similar. Good luck to your wife for her interview.

 

[AustSerbKor]

Australia clearly is operating on a cost-recovery basis for this non-essential service.

I’m fine with it.

The problem with this view, is the Australian government and the passports office in particular are so inefficient that that they probably still losing money at this price. I believe that the Korean government is losing less money providing a free digital service than Australia loses charging $98. Not to mention the loss in time for the customer under the present arrangements.

 

[rp85]

My wife was born in Spain but migrated with her parents to Australia when she was 2 and living here since (she’s 40 now). She obtained Australian citizenship in 2011. She now needs to recover her Spanish citizenship as she didn’t declare to the Spanish consulate here for more than 3 years after obtaining Australian citizenship, which as per Spanish law rescinds the Spanish citizenship automatically. In addition, she has to register our marriage at the consulate in order to register our newborn to obtain Spanish dual citizenship. Also she has to register her father’s death at the consulate (as he was a Spanish Citizen at time of death).

The Australian documents that the Spanish consulate require to be Apostilled for all these processes are:

1. My wife’s Australian citizenship certificate
2. Our marriage certificate
3. Our baby’s birth certificate
4. My father-in-law’s death certificate

So all up, I’m shelling out $98 X 4 = $392 (plus postage) just to get 4 rubber stamps certifying the documents. To put the absolute extortion that the DFAT is running in some context, I was born in India and for registering our marriage, they require both spouses’ birth certificates (and for all non-Spanish birth certificates, they need to be Apostilled by the respective govt/consulate). As the Indian consulate here doesn’t Apostille documents, I arranged for my brother living in India to get this done. He engaged services of an agency which provides a home pickup/drop off service for getting documents Apostilled and charges the equivalent of AU$ 26 for this service. But if he hadn’t engaged the agency and got the documents Apostilled by himself and just paid the govt. fees, it would have cost him around AU$4 which is cheap even by Indian standards. Even counting for the GDP per capita difference between the 2 countries, this is an exorbitant amount charged by DFAT for what is essentially a citizen service and which is monopolised by the DFAT.

Oh and btw the Spanish consulate here charges AU$49 to issue/renew passports as compared to nearly AU$ 400 by the DFAT.

 

[AustSerbKor]

My wife was born in Spain but migrated with her parents to Australia when she was 2 and living here since (she’s 40 now). She obtained Australian citizenship in 2011. She now needs to recover her Spanish citizenship as she didn’t declare to the Spanish consulate here for more than 3 years after obtaining Australian citizenship, which as per Spanish law rescinds the Spanish citizenship automatically. In addition, she has to register our marriage at the consulate in order to register our newborn to obtain Spanish dual citizenship. Also she has to register her father’s death at the consulate (as he was a Spanish Citizen at time of death).

The Australian documents that the Spanish consulate require to be Apostilled for all these processes are:

1. My wife’s Australian citizenship certificate
2. Our marriage certificate
3. Our baby’s birth certificate
4. My father-in-law’s death certificate

So all up, I’m shelling out $98 X 4 = $392 (plus postage) just to get 4 rubber stamps certifying the documents. To put the absolute extortion that the DFAT is running in some context, I was born in India and for registering our marriage, they require both spouses’ birth certificates (and for all non-Spanish birth certificates, they need to be Apostilled by the respective govt/consulate). As the Indian consulate here doesn’t Apostille documents, I arranged for my brother living in India to get this done. He engaged services of an agency which provides a home pickup/drop off service for getting documents Apostilled and charges the equivalent of AU$ 26 for this service. But if he hadn’t engaged the agency and got the documents Apostilled by himself and just paid the govt. fees, it would have cost him around AU$4 which is cheap even by Indian standards. Even counting for the GDP per capita difference between the 2 countries, this is an exorbitant amount charged by DFAT for what is essentially a citizen service and which is monopolised by the DFAT.

Oh and btw the Spanish consulate here charges AU$49 to issue/renew passports as compared to nearly AU$ 400 by the DFAT.

Sadly, the attitude of many Australians is if I don't have to pay, it doesn't matter which stops progress on money saving systems like digitisation. Digital apostilles have existed since 2006, how can we expect the 12th largest economy innthe world by GDP to afford to implement digital apostilles in only 18 years? Even if Australia implements e-apostilles it will be used as an excuse to increase prices which is what happened with passports. At least you shouldn't need more apostilles, I still need apostilled documents for my Hungarian, Croatian and Korean citizenships. The good news is my marriage and all of my wife's and daughter's documents are Korean where apostilles are issued immediately and free through the Internet.