Australia is in discussions with New Zealand over the possibility of ditching physical passports and storing the same identifying data electronically instead, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has confirmed.

So-called "cloud passports" won the judges over and took out the competition.

The idea, which would see someone's information stored in a cloud, has come out of the Foreign Affairs Department's "ideas challenge".

She told the Sydney Morning Herald the Australia-New Zealand trial was likely to go global.

New Zealand ministers have voted in favour of increasing passports' lifespan from five to ten years, with the cost rising from the current $135 to $180.

LOST passports may soon be a thing of the past, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop revealing Australian officials are planning a digital passport trial.

"So we are embracing new ideas not for the sake of it but in order to grow our economy, to make it easier to do business in Australia, to create more jobs".

An ePassport is fitted with a small chip that stores information on the passport holder, including a photo, name, sex and passport number.

"It's a form of cloud passport that we're just trialling at present".

The futuristic system allows law enforcement and other agencies across the country to examine and match millions of photographs of Australians held in existing databases and pin-point a criminal suspects.

The Australian Government last month announced it would be spending 18.5 million Australian Dollars, £8.5million, on a new scheme dubbed the National Facial Biometric Matching Capability.