By Kat Wong in Canberra

AUSTRALIANS will save $156 million and hundreds of thousands of work hours after the government passed legislation to permanently recognise digital commonwealth statutory declarations.

Roughly 3.8 million statutory declarations are used by Australians every year to assert written statements are true for administrative, civil, commercial and private purposes.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this process was strictly paper-based, which meant Australians collectively spent an estimated nine million hours a year working to witness and sign the documents in ink.

But in 2020, the government introduced measures that allowed statutory declarations to be completed with electronic signatures and video-link witnessing.

Legislation that passed through the Senate on Thursday will make this change permanent.

The legislation also allows Australians to execute statutory declarations using the myGov platform from January 2024.

Anyone who wishes to do things the old-fashioned paper-based way can continue to do so with all three methods being equally valid and legally effective.

The legislation also provides safeguards against fraud and exploitation of personal information.

Online platforms and identity services must be approved and show they have robust security arrangements while complying with privacy laws.

They also cannot retain copies of statutory declarations.