I’m not an idiot but I’ve ‘failed’ the Australian passport interview twice now.

The first time, I didn’t bring my birth certificate. There’s small print on the form saying that if my Citizenship papers don’t have my place of birth and sex on it, then I need a birth certificate (and if the birth certificate isn’t in English, then it needs to be officially translated).

Today, I was knocked back straight away for having my form printed double-sided. Now this really annoyed me. Why didn’t the first interviewer tell me this? Why doesn’t it say on the form to print single sided?

Two other missteps averted: again in small print on the form, you have to bring photocopies of some (but not all) your original certificates. Also, your passport photo can’t have shadows. So I went to Officeworks to get photocopies and redid my passport photos on the weekend.

So. Why is the process for getting a new passport so hard? Unnecessarily hard, is my view.