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TRANSCRIPT:
Kathy Dwyer was born in Australia to a British father.
She had her planned trip to the UK turned upside down after discovering she had to apply for a British passport.
"I just... It was very stressful. Then when you start to go onto Facebook sites, you realise you're not the only one who has missed it."
Kathy's situation comes from a change in passport rules.
Australians who are dual citizens of the UK and Ireland will now need a British or Irish passport, or what is known as a certificate of entitlement, to enter the country.
CEO of the Australian Travel Industry Association Dean Long says many Australians aren't aware they're impacted by the changes.
"From Wednesday, if you are a UK citizen, that is if you have a parent born in the UK, there's a high probability you automatically are a citizen of the UK, you'll need to enter the United Kingdom using your British passport. If you don't have a British passport you will be unable to travel to the UK unless you have renounced your citizenship. For most Australians who were born here, they are not even aware that they are citizens of the United Kingdom and that's where the confusion has really kicked off.”
The Australian Government’s official travel advisory service, Smartraveller, is now advising dual citizens they are unable to obtain an ETA, which is the standard visa to enter the UK for travel, business or transit.
The rules were formally announced by the UK Home Office last year, but many say they only recently became aware of the change and just how much it would impact them.
Lynton Jones from travel agency the Savvy Traveller says older Australians could be especially impacted by the changes.
"When you're in your seventies or eighties and you suddenly find out that, hang on a minute, I'm a British dual citizen, that's a shock to the system for some, and getting their mind around that is... and getting them convinced that this is real, and this will affect you.. I think once the regime, once it comes into place in a couple of days time, and we start seeing these stories of people perhaps being not allowed entry into the UK, it's going to get a lot more real."
Mr Jones says there has been a notable lack of clarity in messaging around the new rules.
"I don't think it was clear enough how this was going to affect, particularly us in Australia. And it's encapsulating a couple of million people potentially who might want to go to the UK. So that's a lot of people. And I just don't think that was clarified well enough, whether it was by the British government as to how this was going to happen.”
Last week, the Home Office said it would allow airlines to decide whether they would accept an expired passport with a valid foreign passport, adding another layer of confusion.
The British government says the new regulations are in line with other countries' border policies, and will strengthen national security.
Mr Long says the two key options being presented both involve a costly and long-winded process.
"The British passport will cost about 200 pounds and to renounce your UK citizenship is around about a thousand pounds. So there is a cost involved with that, its difficult to do easily in a quick time frame that's why most people are opting to get a UK passport."
That has been the experience of Ms Dwyer.
She says the process to obtain that passport hasn't been a simple one - or ultimately, worth the trouble.
"In order to do that, I needed my father's birth certificate. He was born about a hundred years ago and I didn't have a copy of that, so then I had to ask for that from the British government, and I've only just received that today. Then I had to get their marriage certificate, which meant that I had to get their death certificates. So in the end that day on the Monday, we decided that we wouldn't go to the UK at all."
