That doesn’t gel with the homecoming experience of many, including Traveller reader Julius Dhanu, who writes: “Coming home to Sydney after extended overseas travel, we were greeted with a chaotic airport immigration scene. There was a long, unstaffed queue for six immigration ticket machines, with one not working, and with foreigners mistakenly joining the line … Compare this to other countries and we look positively well below the standard.”

It’s a similar story in Melbourne, where reader Paul Higgins writes he witnessed “dozens of sleepy people totally bewildered by what to do”.

“What is needed are huge, obvious and multiple signs clearly showing, with diagrams, what to do,” he writes.

Plenty of other countries have creaking immigration processing, but we’re far from best practice. Compare this with entry to Singapore. Provided you’ve completed your SG Arrival Card within three days prior to arrival, you simply insert your passport in the automated border control system’s terminal, follow the instructions, and all being well, you’re through. Typical processing time is under a minute. Foreigners from 60 countries can now use these automated lanes at Changi Airport.

A change in the wind for the Incoming Passenger Card?

The Incoming Passenger Card (IPC) asks questions about biosecurity, where you’re coming from, your passport number, address in Australia, occupation, phone number and several other matters that not too many non-totalitarian regimes think are important, or any of their business. These cards are handed out on the inbound aircraft, and they’re far from user-friendly for non-English speakers – or anyone without a pen.

As Sandie Kleiman Peleg pointed out in a letter to Traveller. “It’s 2024, yet before we arrive in Australia we still receive those silly little customs forms to fill out on the plane. Surely it’s time that Australia opted for online forms like other countries.”

But this source of irritation might finally be on the way out. Last week the ABF announced a pilot program for an Australia Travel Declaration (ADF), a digital alternative to the paper IPC. Starting with a trial program scheduled to begin late in 2024, eligible adult passengers on select Qantas flights from New Zealand will be invited to complete the ADF through the Qantas app.

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When completed, passengers will receive a digital pass via the app and also to their nominated email, which includes a QR code that can be shown to ABF officers on arrival. As well as offering a more streamlined experience for incoming air passengers, engaging passengers before they travel alerts them to the risks of importing banned goods. If the pilot program is a success the ADF will be made more widely available, and hopefully with a dedicated ADF app rather than relying on airlines’ apps.

New Zealand, with similar biosecurity concerns to Australia’s, requires all arriving passengers to complete a New Zealand Traveller Declaration (NZTD). The country has had an electronic version of its NZTD in play for the past year. Incoming passengers from many countries can process through an eGate but this is a simple, one-step process. No changes have been flagged to Australia’s two-step SmartGate system.