Australia’s border shame, as Sydney Airport reveals 32 smart kiosks are sitting in storage
Australia’s biggest airport says it cannot use millions of dollars worth of smart-kiosk technology to speed up border processing, even though passengers are having to navigate long queues.
Australia’s biggest gateway has revealed it has 32 “smart” kiosks sitting in storage because Border Force has not been able to install them, resulting in ongoing delays for international arrivals at Sydney Airport.
Speaking on the topic of “seamless borders” at the Australian Airports Association conference on the Gold Coast on Tuesday, Sydney Airport chief executive Scott Charlton lamented the slow pace of technological enhancements to immigration.
While airports in Dubai and Bali used facial recognition allowing travellers to simply walk through, in Australia most arrivals were still required to fill out a paper card and queue up for a kiosk or immigration officer.
Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus said a decade on, they still had the same number of kiosks (17) but 50 per cent more international travellers.
In an effort to speed up processing of arrivals, Sydney Airport procured 40 kiosks this year but only eight had been installed.
“It’s unfortunate that we have 32 kiosks sitting in a room right next to where people are coming,” Mr Charlton told the conference.
“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.”
The issue appeared to stem from the inability of existing IT infrastructure to support the additional kiosks which were procured by Sydney Airport outside of the traditional government channels.
Mr Charlton said they would have to ask Border Force for more staff to help process international arrivals with numbers continuing to grow at a faster rate than domestic travellers.
“They’re massive numbers, and all the airports are spending money but my biggest concern is how do we manage the border,” he said. “There is innovation but it’s just too slow.”
In the absence of technological solutions to border processing, Mr Charlton warned that the airport would have to construct more buildings to accommodate large queues, with the costs to be passed on to airlines and ultimately passengers. “There’s a cost (of the technology) to the government, but there’s a cost to the public if we don’t do this,” he said.
“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.”
Australian Border Force Assistant Commissioner James Copeman said they shared the frustration of airport operators.
“I’m yet to meet a Border Force officer who turns up for work and goes ‘I love a good queue; can’t wait to be bundling up those passenger cards at the end of my shift’,” he said.
“I don’t want to refer to this as a low-value task because the work that officers do is extremely important, but with the use of artificial intelligence and technology we can automate that and that can become a low-value task.
“Then I can redeploy those officers to protecting the community from people coming to Australia for nefarious reasons or reasons contrary to their visa.”
The discussion coincided with new research commissioned by the AAA that shows 78 per cent of travellers support passport-free border processing to speed up their journey.
Four in 10 international travellers reported experiencing delays or insufficient service at the border, and 71 per cent said they supported digitising the incoming passenger card via an app.
AAA chief executive Simon Westaway said Singapore and Indonesia were moving ahead with the rollout of advanced biometric border systems, and even New Zealand had shifted from paper arrival cards.
“Australia needs to catch up or risk falling behind,” he said.
“Record international air travel has driven Australian aviation growth, up 9.6 per cent in the last financial year, and we must now lay the groundwork for a modern, future-ready border experience.”
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Originally published as Australia’s border shame, as Sydney Airport reveals 32 smart kiosks are sitting in storage
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