Date and time notation in Australia

The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (2 May 2025) and the 12-hour clock (1:34 pm), 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.

Date and time notation in Australia [refresh]

Full date	2 May 2025
All-numeric date	02/05/2025
Time	1:34 pm

Date

Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand:

• 2 May 2025
• 02/05/2025

The month–day–year order (May 2, 2025) is sometimes used, often in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers,^[3][4] advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. Month–day–year in numeric-only form (05/02/2025) is rarely used.

The ISO 8601 date format (2025-05-02) 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. 2025-W18) is not widely understood.^{[citation needed]}

Time

The Australian government recommends using the 12-hour clock (1:34 pm), 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]