Traffic light system can open us to the world

Life here has almost returned to normal – people are heading back to their jobs, we’ve crawled out of recession and the rollout of the vaccine will provide the confidence boost travellers need to start making bookings and give the economy the extra kick it so desperately needs.

Unfortunately for Australia’s airport sector, which has been losing more than $320 million a month since the start of the pandemic, it’ll be several years before it can get back in black.

The sector has been doing it tough but the skilled people who work in the sector have been doing it tougher. Let’s provide them with the confidence to stay in this important industry.

As more people are vaccinated, we’re confident that if governments manage borders more consistently, we’ll start to see a rise in the number of Australians boarding flights to explore all the wonderful tourism destinations our eight states and territories have to offer.

We need to end the sudden border closures that have rocked the public’s confidence to travel.

While a strong domestic tourism market is important, it will never fill the gap of international visitors, with overseas tourists spending three times more than domestic travellers.

The fact is, until international borders re-open, Australia will continue to lose $250 million from the economy every day.

Our nation is at risk of being left behind if it doesn’t come up with a solid plan for keeping state and territory borders open and lifting international travel restrictions.

Given the way Australia has handled the virus, we should be considered the best place in the world to study, work, holiday and live – but if we don’t start to think about how we can lure internationals back, it’ll be an extraordinarily difficult goal to achieve.

Airports want to work with government on formulating a plan to open our international border in a safe, risk-based and phased approach so that we can continue to support the broader Australian economy through the COVID recovery.

We need to start re-connecting global business partners, attracting seasonal agricultural workers and international students and increasing the capacity for Australians to return home.

There are still 41,000 Australian citizens trying to make their way back from overseas. If we can create a range of travel bubbles with other COVIDSafe countries, our hotel quarantine system would be freed up and more Australians would be able to return home.

While there’s been a lot of discussion about vaccine passports and only letting people in who’ve had the jab, it certainly shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all.

Airports propose using a traffic light system that identifies individual countries that could be considered as part of any re-opening.

This traffic light system would be reflective of Australia’s “heavy suppression” policy on COVID-19 where countries with very low/non-existent rates of COVID-19 transmission in the past 30 days would be considered ‘green’ and open up as part of Phase 1.

An agreement with countries Australia already has high levels of co-operation and trust with will be essential, for example those which are part of the Pacific Labour Scheme such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Under this approach, airports and airlines are able to use existing mechanisms.

It’s increasingly frustrating that we’ve been talking about a “travel bubble” arrangement with New Zealand since October last year and we still seem to be no closer to any kind of formal and lasting agreement.

We want to see more action in this space – creating a plan to work with other COVIDSafe nations.

Opening travel bubbles to low-risk countries could bring back through Australian airports up to 52 per cent of international passenger arrivals and 46 per cent of international students.

In a recent survey commissioned by the Australian Airports Association (AAA), 68 per cent of regular travellers said that they would support the phased reopening of the international border and 77 per cent said they’d like to see more international travel bubbles put in place.

More than four in five (82 per cent) say they’d be willing to undertake a rapid COVID-19 test and isolate for three days prior to travelling, while around three-quarters (72 per cent) say they’d agree to use biosecurity technology if it meant they didn’t have to quarantine when travelling overseas.

The health and safety of our population is, of course, the number one priority but people need to get their lives back.

While Australia’s economic recovery is gaining pace, there’s still plenty of work to do.
Airports stand ready to work with governments at all levels to ensure that we can be part of the solution to safely reopen Australia.