Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to talk about a very important issue. I heard the issue of security mentioned earlier, so I thought that I would mention a security issue too: the issue of passport security. The security of passports raises issues across many different policy areas: national security, identify fraud, financial services and border security. There are over a million Australian passports issued every year. These passports are used as proof of citizenship when travelling overseas and also as a primary source of identification when opening bank accounts and replacing lost personal identity documents such as birth certificates. Passports are a key form of identification, counting for 70 points out of the required 100 for proof of identification in financial institutions. But there is a concern about missing passports in this country. Between 1997 and 2006 there was an increase of more than 65 per cent in the number of passports reported as missing or stolen.

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