Vaccine certificates for international travel ‘ready within weeks’

New proof-of-vaccine technology allowing Australians to travel overseas will be ready within weeks, a Senate committee has heard.

Covid committee chair, Labor senator Katy Gallagher, in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

New proof-of-vaccine technology allowing Australians to travel overseas will be ready within weeks, a Senate committee scrutinising the commonwealth’s response to the pandemic has heard, as the Morrison government prepares to announce a plan for the country’s borders to reopen.

The inquiry also heard the government’s COVIDSafe app – originally designed to track down close contacts – has cost taxpayers more than $9m despite being rarely used by tracers to identify chains of transmission.

Services Australia chief executive Rebecca Skinner told the committee she expected the new “visual digital seal” technology, which will allow Australians to verify their vaccination status with Home Affairs, to be ready within three weeks.

“We are confident that the technology will all be in place within the next sort of two to three weeks, well before the end of October,” she said.

“Our plan is to have all of the technology in place so that it is settled and tested … before the policy decisions need to be made.”

Under the government’s four-stage reopening plan, restrictions on outbound travel for vaccinated Australians will lift as soon as the nation hits the 80 per cent vaccination threshold.

Ms Skinner told the committee she did not want to be in a situation where policy decisions could not be made because the certificates weren’t ready. However, she was adamant the technology was not a vaccine passport.

“There is not a vaccine passport being developed or delivered by Services Australia,” she said.

It was heard that, once granted an individual’s permission, the department would then send that person’s vaccination status to the passport office to generate a “visible digital seal”.

Service Australia executive Charles McHardie said that certificate would then appear in the Medicare Express Plus app and be downloadable on to a smart phone.

“That can be used at departure gates, et cetera, or wherever it may be used as the borders start to open up,” he said.

Questioned by Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching about why there was no consistency in check-in apps with different versions for each of the states and territories, Services Australia’s Jarrod Howard said it was ultimately a decision for the premiers and chief ministers.

“It will be led by the states and territories because you know, at the end of the day they’re responsible for the public health orders,” he said.

He said residents of the ACT, Northern Territory, Queensland or Tasmania used compatible check-in technology that could be used across those jurisdictions.

“Those states that are not part of that conglomerate (of the ACT, NT, Queensland and Tasmania) are looking at how we might be able to streamline some of those activities to make it a better customer experience,” he said.

Earlier this week the Prime Minister signalled the international border, which was shuttered last March, could be opened by the end of the year.