Australia Electronic Travel Authority (ETA, subclass 601)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow, records a mock-data test run of the field set, and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-03

The document was derived from and cross-checked against two official sources (below), but the full field-by-field comparison the practice requires — confirming every published field, type, requiredness, and constraint directly against the live AustralianETA app on an NFC-enabled device — has not been completed. It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Why this candidate was picked up now

au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601 was already a tier-2 candidate in discovery/catalog.json with a note (GOV-276) flagging that the application channel is mobile-app-only since 2022. Visa is the least-covered of GovSchema's 6 focus verticals (only 3 of 9 tracked jurisdictions — CA, GB, US — had a Visa schema before this document; AU had none). This cycle's research phase surveyed coverage across all 6 verticals (DMV, Business Formation, Visa, Passport, Taxes, National ID & Civic Documents) and picked this catalog-ready candidate as the clearest remaining gap.

Access constraint

immi.homeaffairs.gov.au returns HTTP 403 to both direct WebFetch and curl retrieval — the same class of block already recorded for passports.gov.au and dfat.gov.au (see the gov-au-wayback-workaround practice memory). Recovered via a Wayback Machine capture instead. The AustralianETA mobile app itself was not driven directly: it requires a physical NFC-enabled Android or iOS device to scan a passport chip, which this environment does not have.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601 / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Department of Home Affairs
• Primary source (Wayback capture): http://web.archive.org/web/20260515072855/https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/electronic-travel-authority-601 (captured 2026-05-15; live URL confirmed 403-blocked at authoring time, 2026-07-03). The archived page embeds the visa's full eligibility criteria, step-by-step application guide, fee, and validity as structured JSON in the page's own client-rendering payload (PageSchemaHiddenField), not just free-form prose — a stronger signal than a plain-text summary.
• Official supporting PDF: "Australian ETA App – Guidance notes for industry users" — https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/supporting/files/australian-eta-app-industry-guidance.pdf — fetched directly with curl (HTTP 200, no access block, unlike the HTML page). 16 pages, extracted with pdfjs-dist (getTextContent, position-sorted by y/x coordinate) per the gov-form-pdf-extraction technique. Walks through every screen of the app's applicant flow section-by-section (§5-§13), written for a travel-agent/industry user assisting an applicant, but the screens and data collected are the same ones an individual self-service applicant sees.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-03
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (initial authoring source-review)

Scope decisions

• Out of scope — travel-agent/industry-user IATA verification. The app asks a "are you a travel agent?" branch requiring an IATA numeric code or travel agent ID verification number before an industry user can start an application. Not modeled: this document is the applicant/self-service path.
• Out of scope — under-18 applicants. The "Best interests of the child" eligibility criterion (the visa may be refused if not in the best interests of an applicant under 18) is not modeled as a field; this document assumes an adult applicant, consistent with every sibling passport/visa document in this registry.
• Out of scope — an applicant who fails the character, health, genuine-visitor, or debt criteria. Each is modeled as an eligibility-role field with a transitions exit to null; the official guidance is explicit that such an applicant should apply for a Visitor (subclass 600) visa instead of an ETA, not continue this application with extra fields.
• Out of scope — a specific "purpose of visit" selection field. Unlike the sibling gb/ukvi/standard-visitor-visa, neither source states the app collects a discrete purpose-of-visit answer; fabricating one would violate source-of-truth fidelity, so it is omitted.
• Out of scope — more than one additional passport. holdsOtherPassports / otherPassportCountry / otherPassportNumber model a single additional passport; the live app's "Add another passport" link supports declaring more than one, a known flattening (the same class of simplification recorded for au/ato/individual-tax-return-mytax's multiple-concurrent-employer exclusion).

What was confirmed against the source

| Source element | Field(s) | |---|---| | Eligible-passport list (34 countries/jurisdictions) is a closed, enumerated list on the official eligibility page | passportIssuingCountry | | Passport chip scan pre-fills name, date of birth, passport number, and other details | familyName, givenNames, dateOfBirth, passportNumber, passportIssueDate, passportExpiryDate | | Some countries omit the National ID number from the passport chip, requiring manual entry | nationalIdNumber | | Applicant must declare other passports held and provide their details | holdsOtherPassports, otherPassportCountry, otherPassportNumber | | App lets the applicant check for an existing Australian visa | hasExistingAustralianVisa | | App requires a live facial photo of the applicant | applicantPhoto | | Applicant must declare any other name they have been known by | hasOtherNames, otherNameDetails | | App collects home address and phone number, phone in the home country's format | homeAddressLine1/Line2/City/Country/PostalCode, homePhoneNumber | | App collects and verifies an email address by one-time code, used for the decision notification and payment receipt | emailAddress | | App's "ETA questions" step asks about criminal convictions and contact details for the stay in Australia | hasCriminalConvictionOrDomesticViolenceHistory, contactAddressInAustralia | | Eligibility criteria: genuine visitor, health requirement, character requirement, debt to the Australian Government | isGenuineTemporaryVisitor, meetsHealthRequirement, hasCriminalConvictionOrDomesticViolenceHistory, hasPaidBackAustralianGovernmentDebt | | AUD 20 service fee, no separate Visa Application Charge; 12-month validity or passport expiry (whichever is shorter); 3-month stay per entry, multiple entries | Recorded in description/title, not encoded as a data field (same convention as gb/homeoffice/eta-application and ca/ircc/eta-application) |

Mock-data test run

Per the issue's phase-4 instruction to test-run the schema with valid mock data, a representative filled-out application was authored and checked field-by-field against every type/required/validation/requiredWhen constraint in schema.json:

``json { "isGenuineTemporaryVisitor": true, "meetsHealthRequirement": true, "hasCriminalConvictionOrDomesticViolenceHistory": false, "hasPaidBackAustralianGovernmentDebt": true, "passportIssuingCountry": "japan", "passportNumber": "TH3829104", "familyName": "Tanaka", "givenNames": "Haruto", "dateOfBirth": "1994-06-21", "passportIssueDate": "2021-02-15", "passportExpiryDate": "2031-02-14", "holdsOtherPassports": false, "hasExistingAustralianVisa": false, "applicantPhoto": "haruto-tanaka-live-photo.jpg", "hasOtherNames": false, "homeAddressLine1": "4-12-3 Minamiaoyama", "homeAddressCity": "Minato-ku, Tokyo", "homeAddressCountry": "Japan", "homeAddressPostalCode": "107-0062", "homePhoneNumber": "+81 90 1234 5678", "emailAddress": "haruto.tanaka@example.jp", "contactAddressInAustralia": "Staying with a friend, 22 Wattle Street, Bondi, NSW 2026, Australia" } ``

This models Haruto Tanaka, a Japanese passport holder (Japan is on the eligible-passport list) applying for himself for a two-week family/friend visit, with no criminal, health, debt, or character flags raised and only one passport. The scenario deliberately exercises the false/false branch of both holdsOtherPassports and hasOtherNames so their conditional otherPassportCountry/otherPassportNumber/otherNameDetails follow-ups are correctly omitted, and leaves nationalIdNumber unset because Japanese passports carry no National ID number field to omit in the first place. A one-off Node script (node:fs + a hand-rolled per-field validator, not committed to the repo) confirmed every populated field satisfies its type/validation constraint, every requiredWhen condition is correctly satisfied or correctly left unset, and no required field was left unset:

`` PASS — mock adult self-application ETA (no eligibility flags, single passport, no aliases) satisfies the schema field-level constraints. ``

Both registry validators were run against the schema document itself and pass:

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601/1.0.0/schema.json

$ cd tools && node validate-ajv.mjs ../registry/au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/au/homeaffairs/eta-application-601/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.3] ```

What is NOT yet independently verified

• The live app's exact screen-by-screen wording and field order were not directly observed on an NFC-enabled device — the industry-guidance PDF describes the applicant-facing screens narratively (with screenshots not extracted as text) rather than as a literal field-by-field transcript.
• hasCriminalConvictionOrDomesticViolenceHistory may be two separate questions in the live app, not one combined declaration — the official process page states the two together ("any criminal conviction or domestic violence history") but this was not independently confirmed against the live form. A future verification pass should split this field if the live app asks them separately.
• isGenuineTemporaryVisitor, meetsHealthRequirement, and hasPaidBackAustralianGovernmentDebt's exact in-app question wording is not confirmed — these are eligibility criteria stated on the official page, not confirmed screen text from the app itself. Modeled as mandatory self-declarations by the same convention already established for gb/homeoffice/eta-application and ca/ircc/eta-application's background questions.
• contactAddressInAustralia's exact field structure (single free-text field vs. structured address lines) is not confirmed; the sources describe it only as "contact details for their stay in Australia."
• Constraint bounds (name length 24 characters per the truncation note, phone number length, address line lengths) are reasonable encodings from the source's own prose, not citations of a published Home Affairs validation rule.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance this document to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2 field-by-field comparison, step 3 flow comparison) against the live AustralianETA app on an NFC-enabled device with a real test passport, confirms the sources are still authoritative, resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3, practice Procedure step 5), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt/nextReviewBy. This v1.0.0 record stays as the authoring provenance.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-01 (6 months). Re-check the sources on or before that date, on any source.url change, or when Home Affairs publishes a new version of the industry-guidance PDF.