The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (27 January 2026) and the 12-hour clock (9:18 am), although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line[1] and Transport for NSW[2] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.
Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand:
27 January 2026
27/01/2026
The month–day–year order (January 27, 2026) is occasionally used, often in the mastheads of magazines, newspapers,[3][4] advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows; however, this is not an official standard and is often discouraged to avoid confusion. Month–day–year in numeric-only form (01/27/2026) is rarely used and also often discouraged.
The ISO 8601 date format (2026-01-27) is recommended by the government to be used when communicating internationally.[5] It is also commonly used in software.
The Australian government identifies Monday as the first day of the week,[6] which is consistent with the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) since its October 2021 release.[7] However, there is disagreement among the general population over whether Monday or Sunday is the first day of the week.[8]
Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1"). Week ending is often abbreviated to "W/E" or "W.E." The first day of the week or the day of an event are sometimes referred to (e.g., "week of 15/1"). Week numbers (as in "the third week of 2007") are not often used, but may appear in some business diaries in numeral-only form (e.g., "3" at the top or bottom of the page). ISO 8601 week notation (e.g. 2026-W05) is not widely understood.[citation needed]
Time
The Australian government recommends using the 12-hour clock (9:18 am), except where the 24-hour clock is more helpful in the context, such as in travel, scientific fields and the military.[5] The government also recommends a colon as the separator; however, the full stop is still used in some contexts.[5] They also suggest writing the noon/after noon qualifier as "am" or "pm" in lower case without a full stop.[5]
