OhForSure
Yeh I have one of those new passports with the chip in it as well. The only problem is no one is using it to its full potential. Not even Aus or USA. I have used the electronic lane at Sydney on numerous occasions (when it is working). All they are doing here is scanning the front page of your passport and comparing it to what is in their data base and then using some form of facial recognition software to compare who is standing in front of the camera is the person in the passport. I would have to say that 50% of the time the system is broken and when it is working it is slow. The data chip in the passport isn’t used at all for this process.
I will concede that in Aus it would probably be very hard to get away trying to use a forged Aussie passport but in the rest of the world I would think it would be quite easy because there is no sharing of data bases.