‘Distressed’ workers at the Australian Passport Office in Canberra were told their jobs had been axed and would be relocated interstate in a tacky April Fools’ Day joke.

According to a Fairfax report, 30 public servants arrived at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on April 1 to be told they no longer had work due to an office restructure.

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The announcement was made on one of the office’s television screens, and was reportedly left on display for five hours as staff becoming increasingly distressed.

It wasn’t until 2pm that a supervisor at the Passport Office’s Canberra Regional Eligibility Centre told workers the announcement was an April Fools’ Day prank.

The workers who were on the receiving end of the ill-informed prank were reportedly low-level employees of the department, many of them on temporary or part-time contracts.

The announcement that greeted passport workers. Photo: Fairfax

The joke comes after a spate of job cuts at DFAT, with the department to shed 500 jobs by June as part of the wider dismissal of 11,000 Commonwealth workers.

The main role of the workers is to check Australian passport applicants meet all the eligibility requirements in a role known as ‘ELLO’.

The announcement said the passport office was undergoing “substantial technological changes” and that ELLO would be moved to Melbourne as a result.

“Advertisements for ELLO positions will be released soon,” the announcement read.

A spokeswoman for the department told Fairfax DFAT had no comment in relation to the incident.