Pocket Knife → 🇦🇺 Australia

A credit card knife is a small folding blade built into a flat, card-sized body so that it sits in a wallet like a bank card. Its design is what matters legally: the blade is hidden inside an object that does not look like a knife.

ACT Policing describes the category as "a single or double edged blade that can be made to look like any other thing that is not a weapon", and gives as examples "credit card knives, knives that sit within a case that can be slid into a wallet, blades in pens".

Not without permission granted in advance. Regulation 4H of the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956 says importing a weapon listed in Part 2 of Schedule 13 "is prohibited unless" the importation meets the requirements set out for that item. Item 20 of that list covers goods incorporating "a concealed knife of any length, made of any material" or "a concealed blade of any length, made of any material". The Regulations do not use the words "credit card knife". Our reading is that a blade folded away inside a card-shaped body is a concealed blade within item 20 — the same way ACT Policing classes credit card knives as concealed or disguised blades — but that is our interpretation, not wording found in the Regulations.

Item 20 can be imported only under one of six tests: the official purposes test, the specified purposes test, the dealer test, the returned goods test, the public interest test or the national interest test. The police certification test — the route the Australian Border Force lists for daggers and throwing knives — is not one of them. The Australian Border Force states: "Goods must not be imported to Australia until you have been notified of permission to import in writing." It also warns: "Goods that are imported without a valid permit may be subject to seizure and disposal."

This applies whichever bag the knife is packed in. The checked-baggage rule for ordinary pocket knives on this page is an aviation-security rule; it does not make a concealed-blade knife admissible at the border.

No. Item 20 is about concealment, not about folding knives in general. ACT Policing says: "Swiss army knives are not considered prohibited weapons, however, be mindful of carrying such items in public if you do not have a lawful excuse, such as needing it for work."

Other knife types are listed elsewhere in Schedule 13, including automatic knives (flick knives, switchblades and assisted opening knives), butterfly knives, push knives, trench knives, throwing knives, ballistic knives and knives that are neither metallic nor ceramic. Manual folding knives that lock open are not listed in the Schedule. The rest of this page covers ordinary pocket knives.

That is decided by each state and territory, not at the border. In the Australian Capital Territory the answer is no. ACT Policing states: "Weapons and blades that are concealed within or disguised as an article that’s not a weapon are a prohibited weapon. This includes, but is not limited to credit card knives." Its advice to anyone holding one is to "destroy or dispose of it safely".

This page has checked only the ACT's published position. Other states and territories keep their own prohibited-weapon lists, so ask the police weapons registry where you will be before assuming a different answer.