$150 to queue for hours: Australians paying cash to avoid passport lines | hijessicayun
Australians looking to side-step lengthy passport office lines are offering individuals on marketplaces such as Airtasker up to $150 to queue in their place, as the new Labor government scrambles to add extra staff to clear processing backlogs., meaning some are waiting two months or longer for their official documents. The volume of applications per day has doubled on pre-pandemic levels, and this week hit a record high of 16,417 applications.
Campbell wound up lodging her application at Martin Place Post Office, which accepts fast-tracked applications. That evening, she got an email saying her passport was ready to be picked up.Campbell considers herself very fortunate. “I don’t honestly know how my application was expedited so quickly,” she said. “I was like – ‘this is insane’. Everyone I’d spoken to said their passport had been taking over eight weeks.
Within minutes, she had the passport in hand, and zero regrets about paying extra for a queue stand-in. “It wasn’t even the line itself – I knew it would take long. But the stress of people around [me] – it honestly felt like we were trying to cross a border because it was so frantic and awful.”
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