Passport delays expected until September as Services Australia staff redeployed

It comes as the Foreign Affairs Department said last month it had issued more than 1.1 million passports since June 30 last year - almost double the 2020-21 financial year.

Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Tim Watts confirmed there had been 2 million renewals but had doubled the number of staff working through applications in response.

Mr Watts said staff in the Passport Office had increased from 730 to about 1400, following a commitment last month to bring on a minimum of 250 additional workers.

In addition to the DFAT graduates redeployed to the task, public servants at Services Australia had also been brought across.

The junior minister told a Nine radio station on Wednesday he was expecting the processing time frame for applications to return to its regular three-week turnaround by next month's end.

"We've doubled the number of staff working in the Passport Office since the election," Mr Watts said.

"The wait times on the phones are down to around a couple of minutes ... we've set up pop-up passport collection facilities and that's really addressed that queueing problem outside the offices.

"[There's] still a bit of work to do on the backlog of applications, but we're expecting to be back to our regular three-week processing window by the end of next month."

Since the re-opening of borders, visa applications to enter the country have also spiked.

The growing backlog of visa applications is tipped to soon surpass a million as the country opens back up to migrant workforces.

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The Home Affairs Department, which is responsible for visa processing, will outsource biometric collection in overseas centres as it anticipates a further explosion in the number of applications.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on departmental programs and resulted in significantly reduced demand for visas," government documents state.

"Economic recovery, however, will be characterised by increasing delivery pressures, evolving threats of growing complexity, and traveller expectations for more efficient and digitally-enabled services."