Features of Australia’s new passport

The new ‘R Series’ passport has a different look and feel to previous Australian travel documents.

The photo page is made of tough, high-security, layered plastic, known as polycarbonate.

Polycarbonate is laser-engraved, not printed with ink. Photos on the photo page appear in black and white rather than colour.

At the lower left of the holder’s main photo is a raised map of Australia. A second photo appears in a transparent window. Other windows reveal the antenna for the passport chip, which is embedded in the photo page. The holder’s photo appears in colour on the observations page, facing the photo page.

Polycarbonate is more durable than laminated paper. It is less susceptible to tears and other minor damage that can cause difficulties for travellers when crossing borders.

Image shows the photo page or ID page of the R Series passport and lists three features with supporting text that reads “Raised map”, second line of machine-readable zone and radio antenna for the ePassport chip.

_{The R Series photo page.}

The rest of the passport showcases Australia’s natural beauty. The inside front and back cover pages represent the coasts. The visa pages showcase 17 iconic landscapes from around the country. Under ultraviolet light, the sky in each image becomes a unique nightscape, and a local species of native fauna appears.

The illustration shows two images of the Governor-General's page and the Security Features page of the R passport. The first image shows these two pages under normal lighting. The second image shows these two pages under ultra-violet light. It shows the blue elements on the page turning bright red, and a red and white wattle appears on the inside front cover, under the Governor-General's message.

_{Uluru features on the centre pages of the passport and under ultraviolet light changes to a nightscape.}

The passport has many other security features. For instance, the wattle on the security features page changes colour if you hold it at different angles. In ultraviolet light, the blue elements on the photo page turn bright red, and a red and white wattle appears on the inside front cover, under the Governor-General's message. The R Series continues the long-standing inclusion of Indigenous artwork into Australian passports.

The illustrations show two images of the centre pages of the R Series passport. The first image shows Uluru illustrated in true colour with a small map of the Northern Territory in the bottom right-hand corner. The second image shows this illustration under ultraviolet light, revealing a unique night-time skyscape with a kangaroo in the foreground. These images are on a background of a map of the world.

_{The Governor-General's page and the Security Features page of the R Series passport.}