Stand in line

The situation at Perth Airport for instance has become a not very funny joke promoting the airport’s chief executive Brad Geatches to lash out at what he termed “poor border and quarantine facilitation” causing understandable frustration for travellers.

And he has 750 million reasons to be frustrated, for that is the amount the airport has invested over the past four years in bringing the airport up to speed with its phenomenal growth.

The results are impressive but a shortage of Border Force and Quarantine staff means they are almost for nothing.

“It is disappointing to see much of the promised improvement in customer service compromised by inadequate border agency resources,” he said.

Disappointed, in fact, hardly describes the situation – it is nothing short of a national disgrace.

Tourism and travel are the world’s fastest growing industries and importantly employ many of the young and unskilled as well as millions of professionals.

Government and industry must ensure that we have world-class airports with world-class processing facilities.

This is particularly important when one considers that many overseas travellers have flown well over 20 hours to get to Australia and then have to face a 90-minute crawl through border and quarantine with tired children.

“It is particularly poor that many passengers are having to queue for up to 30 minutes after collecting their bags, simply to be told (by quarantine staff) they are no longer required when they reach the front of the queue,” said Geatches.

“The physical infrastructure is no longer an impediment to a good level of customer service or to creating good first and last impressions of WA for international visitors. ” Commenting on the Perth Airport situation Tourism Council WA chief executive Evan Hall said it was “atrocious” and harming tourism.

“With international traffic growing – through Perth – on average six per cent a year, the arrivals and departure delays were set to get far worse,” he said.

“International travellers and the WA tourism industry deserve much better. ” Manning levels are just part of the problem.

A survey by The West Australian newspaper found that on the five surveyoccasions over an eight-week period at least 25 per cent of the Smart Gate passport readers designed to speed processing were out of service.

In many cases this was just because they had runout of tickets and nobody had refilled them.

Hall also questioned the federal government’s $55 passenger movement charge that collected $120 million last year but did not deliver anywhere near the value.

“The government has turned airports into tax collection agencies and the take is far more than the mining tax ever achieved,” he said. “This tax is insidious. ” And it is just not Geatches and Hall raising serious concerns.

Australian Airports Association chief executive Caroline Wilkie said Perth’s international terminal was one of Australia’s “most challenged” because of immigration and quarantine staff shortages.

She said a lack of flexibility in peak times compounded the problems.

Community and Public Sector Union deputy national president Rupert Evans said Perth Airport had a shortfall of about 30 workers which meant longer queues and processing and more stress on workers asked to “hold it all together”.

He was told that at least on one occasion there was just a single primary officer on duty to process 600 people.

“That is simply unacceptable from a government that claims to have border security as its first priority,” said Evans.

Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg concedes processing rates at Perth could be “challenged” at peak times but at other times the performance was “ahead of metrics”.

He says the ABF had a six-year reform program to introduce high levels of automation for “seamless low-touch experiences” for passengers at international airports.

In the interim, Quaedvlieg said solutions were being worked with Perth Airport.

These innovations included using the new airport infrastructure to create “nothing to declare” exits and a Smartgate concierge to increase electronic processing.

However in Contrails’ view a six-year solution is manifestly unacceptable.

The industry needs and demands a six-month solution to bring our clearance times up to world’s best practice.