DFAT's travel alerts are too boring: audit

Travel warnings to Australians heading overseas are too long and rambling and few read them all the way to the end, the National Audit Office says.

Auditors said they were worried many travellers would not spend nearly 40 minutes wading through the Smartraveller website's travel advisory for Thailand, for example.

"This commentary is often lengthier than that of international counterparts; the United Kingdom's terrorism warnings for low risk countries were, on average, 50 per cent shorter than those issued by DFAT [Department of Foreign Affairs]," the audit team wrote, according to Fairfax Media.

"The average visitor to DFAT's travel advice pages spends less than a third of the time required to read an advisory in its entirety."

Given that only 8 percent of respondents to a DFAT survey reported changing their behaviour overseas on the department's advice, the auditors suggested the department shorten its warnings and write them in plain English.

"Reducing the length of advisories, improving the conciseness of messages and using simpler language would also make advisories more accessible to those with limited English language backgrounds," the audit team wrote.