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Australians are broadly in favour of passportless border processing at airports, according to a new survey released by the Australian Airports Association (AAA).
The research commissioned by the AAA and conducted by Zing Insights surveyed 500 Australians and found 78 per cent were in favour of passportless systems like biometrics to make the journey faster, while 71 per cent supported digitising the incoming passenger card.
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The survey also found that 73 per cent are confident using self-service technology at airports, while around 40 per cent saw “delays or insufficient service at the border” over the past year.
“Our neighbouring tourism competitors are already moving ahead,” Simon Westaway, chief executive of the AAA, said.
“Singapore and Indonesia are rolling out advanced biometric border systems, and New Zealand has shifted from paper arrival cards to a digital traveller declaration. Australia needs to catch up or risk falling behind.
“Record international air travel has driven Australian aviation growth, up 9.6 per cent last financial year, and we must now lay the groundwork for a modern, future-ready border experience.
“A border bottleneck must never be a tourist’s first impression of Australia, and returning Australians deserve an equally seamless arrival. We need bold ambitions and practical action.”
The survey comes as Scott Charlton, CEO of Sydney Airport, revealed that most of an order of 40 SmartGates the airport procured earlier this year have been gathering dust in a storeroom, with only eight installed, as Border Force has been unable to set them up with existing IT infrastructure.
According to Charlton, who made the comments at the AAA’s national conference on the Gold Coast, government and airports need to embrace updated border management technology or risk requiring expensive new buildings to accommodate long queues.
“It’s unfortunate that we have 32 kiosks sitting in a room right next to where people are coming,” he said, as reported by The Australian.
“They’re sitting there waiting to be used. They’ve been there for a while but we can’t plug them in at this point in time. It’s a long story.
“If we don’t work out this technology we’re going to have to build bigger holding halls, we’re going to build bigger storage spaces for staff, and we’re going to have more desks for customs and Border Force to manually manage all this growth.”
Australia’s passport processing systems went down over the weekend, forcing ABF officers to process inbound and outbound traffic manually.
