The latest global passport rankings are out and, for Australia, it’s good news and not-so-good news. Good in that we are currently the holders of the equal-seventh most powerful passport on the planet, according to Henley & Partners, the UK-based investment migration agency that annually audits the relative strengths of 199 of the world’s travel credentials.
The ranking reflects how many countries we have visa-free access to, which currently stands at 184. To put that freedom of movement in context, we’ve got the same sway as citizens of the UK, UAE, Czechia, Estonia and Croatia. The New Zealand passport just pips ours, in equal-sixth position with Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Malta and Hungary. All have visa-free access to 185 nations.
At the top of the ease-of-travel table are Singaporeans with unfettered entry to 193 destinations, followed by South Koreans (190) and Japanese (189).
The index essentially rates the cross-border clout a passport gives its holders by tracking the vagaries of visa regulations. Australia is holding its own while the likes of America and the United Kingdom slip down the league table as they lose their favoured-nation statuses with more countries. Both topped the passport-power rankings last decade – the US in 2014 and UK in 2015. But the US has fallen out of the top 10 (it’s now in 11th position, its weakest result since the index began 20 years ago) and the UK is equal-seventh, down from six, with us.
“The Australian passport has managed to avoid the downward slide seen by the US and UK passports in recent years,” says Dominic Volek, Henley & Partners’ group head of private clients. “In general (Australia) has remained very stable, consistently ranking somewhere between 10th and sixth place since the first Henley Passport Index in 2006.”
The not-so-good news is that we’re not reciprocating the warm welcome the rest of the world is showing us. On Henley’s related Openness Index, which charts the gap between our visa-free access to other countries and theirs to ours, we rate a rather dismal 81st, languishing alongside Azerbaijan. Even borders at the US (77th) and the UK (55th) are more “open” than ours.
I hadn’t really considered how restrictive our border control is before but the vast majority of nationalities need a visa to come here. New Zealanders have the easiest run, with visas granted on arrival. Another 33 nations have streamlined entry via online electronic travel authorisations, effectively a visa waiver but with digital pre-vetting. (Bit of trivia: Australia was the first country to trial ETAs, way back in 1996.)
The other 165 nationalities in Henley’s survey must apply for a visa to visit our wide brown land. Volek puts the paradox succinctly: “The Australian passport has access to over 80 per cent of destinations globally, but only allows access to less than 20 per cent of passports.”
If it wants to move up the index the Australian passport must not only consistently increase its access score “but do so at a higher rate than the other passports or it will remain where it is, or be overtaken and pushed down the ranks,” he says.
“The United Arab Emirates, for example, has managed to move up the ranking significantly over the last 10 years by gaining access to 62 destinations and moving up the ranking from 38th in 2016, to now being seventh alongside Australia.”
The EU’s planned introduction of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) next year won’t affect our passport’s standing on the index. From late 2026 or thereabouts (the EU hasn’t announced an exact date), citizens of Australia and other visa-exempt nations will have to apply for an online ETIAS travel authorisation before entering any of the 29 Schengen countries plus Cyprus.
The move will affect around 1.4 billion people from 59 nations. But the pass is valid for three years so it won’t be an annual hassle for those lucky enough to visit Europe regularly (see travel-europe.europa.eu for more details).
Volek says Henley classifies all ETAs, including ETIAS and the American waiver program ESTA, as visa-free access. He acknowledges that, as travel becomes increasingly digitised, “the distinction between eVisa and ETA will become increasingly blurred… but considering the global inequalities between technology access and implementation, visas are likely to remain for the foreseeable future”.
The Australian passport’s continued influence is some consolation, I guess, for the eye-watering price we’re forced to pay for one. At $412 for a 10-year passport, it’s by far the world’s most expensive. Only Mexico (around $336) and the US (about $254) come anywhere close.
Count the cost
To illustrate just how wildly expensive the Australian passport is: the world’s most powerful passport, Singapore’s, costs a fraction of ours at just $82 ($S70); Korea charges only around $50 (50,000 won) for the second most useful travel document, while Japan’s is around $160 (16,000 yen).
Kendall Hill
Read related topics:NewsTravel Advice
