[Peetwo]

In harmony we all thrive -

We all know that in sport - cricket, rugby, netball in particular - that there will always be a healthy rivalry with our Cuz'ns across the dutch...

However in other things like trade and tourism there should be no such animosity and all diplomatic and bureaucratic barriers should be pared back to help maximise the benefits to our two economies.

From Tourism & Transport Forum CEO Margy Osmond, via the Oz today:  

Common border with NZ is way off, but let’s use common sense

Pre-clearance of passengers is the key to streamlining the customes and immigration process.

• Margy Osmond
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM September 29, 2017
  

As Australia enters a new golden age of tourism, which is delivering record numbers of international visitors to our shores every month, the visitor economy is our next super-growth sector.

However, there is a very real risk that we could become a victim of our own success. With more and more people touching down at our international airports than ever, the rate of growth in visitor arrivals is rapidly overtaking the capacity of our airports to deal with the higher volumes and, unfortunately, the first impression for many of our new arrivals is a long wait in a long queue.

If you ask most travellers, they would say that the Customs and immigration queue is the worst part of the journey.

The answer to this problem is not about continually building or expanding terminals to absorb the growth. That is impractical and it is unaffordable. We need to find other ways of reducing the queues, improving productivity and continually enhancing the visitor experience, without compromising security.

So what if the solution lay in removing seven million passenger journeys from the arrival queues of Australia and New Zealand’s international terminals each year?

This very attractive idea is at the core of a new report, “Fast Forward: Streamlining trans-Tasman air travel”.

It is all about reform that if implemented could potentially remove millions of people from international arrival queues and cut at least an hour off trans-Tasman travel time.

New Zealand and Australia are not only geographically and culturally close, but also deliver more visitors to each other than any other market, with more than 47,000 aircraft movements and close to seven million passengers each year. So it is certainly the most logical place to look for efficiencies.

With border processing being such a bugbear for travellers, the Tourism & Transport Forum commissioned this paper to get the discussion going on what a different future could look like.

We asked the global aviation consultancy Airbiz to look at scenarios to make air travel between Australia and New Zealand as easy and safe as possible. So are we talking about the much discussed development of a common border with New Zealand?

The report looks at this option of a single border allowing common visa, entry permit and customs arrangements and procedures for the two countries.

While admittedly this a highly complex and a less likely option, in theory it would produce the simplest, most streamlined outcomes for trans-Tasman passenger journeys.

Key to the more likely options is a pre-clearance model. This would mean the use of advanced biometric screening technology to enable immigration and quarantine pre-clearance by passengers prior to departure combined with sharper information collection on passengers. This gets rid of any further formalities for most passengers when they reach their destinations. Basically, it is faster and easier for passengers and does not compromise security.

This pre-clearance could either be by individual passenger or by flight. New facial recognition technology such as “Face on the Fly”, means pre-clearance is possible. Individuals can be identified and screened without ever needing to be stopped for passports, travel documents or even boarding passes. Using information provided before departure, this system would also enable the majority of passengers to collect their luggage from a “domestic-like” reclaim area, and leave without any further hassles.

Not only would this create a more seamless travel experience for passengers, it would potentially free up gates in international terminals, reducing arrival and departure queues, and streamlining flight connections for passengers transferring between trans-Tasman and domestic flights in both Australia and New Zealand.

Our vision is to see full pre-clearance of international passengers so that their arrival at the destination airport is similar to that of a domestic traveller — a whole lot easier and much more pleasant. There would be no apparent border check and baggage would be reclaimed in a domestic-like environment, whether arriving into an international or integrated domestic and international terminal.

We have to start the conversation about streamlining the trans-Tasman journey and delivering highly effective and efficient pre-clearance for most or all passengers now.
While we might be unable to achieve a common border solution, we should be able to achieve a common sense one.

New Zealand is our closest and most trusted ally and it is time the onerous and archaic constraints currently in place are relegated to the dustbin of history.

Margy Osmond is Tourism & Transport Forum chief executive.

Perhaps harmonization in aviation safety regulation and oversight should also be on the agenda for cutting costs for the mutual benefit of the tourism, trade and aviation industries in the Asia Pacific region? - Nah..that sounds like too much common sense for our dopey NFI miniscule...    



MTF...P2