As Covid-19 cases force cities into lockdown across the country, the political spotlight has turned to international arrivals. The premiers of Victoria and Queensland are calling for a dramatic reduction to the number of people allowed to travel to Australia, with the Queensland deputy premier using figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to suggest too many non-Australians are travelling to the country.
Here’s what we know about travel to and from Australia since the pandemic started.
How is travel to and from Australia controlled?
The number of people travelling to Australia is mostly limited by the “passenger cap” limit. The way this works is states and territories tell the federal government a maximum number of incoming arrivals per week they can handle based on “quarantine and related resourcing capacity”. The federal government then applies the limits. With the additional capacity of the Howards Spring facility in the Northern Territory, which takes commonwealth-run repatriation flights, Australia’s weekly passenger cap is currently 7,385.
People who aren’t Australian citizens or permanent residents need to apply for an exemption to travel to Australia.
Australians and Australian residents who want to travel out of Australia also need to apply for an exemption. Between 25 March 2020 and 31 May 2021, 156,507 such exemptions were granted.
Since April this year, the Australian-New Zealand travel bubble has been in place, which allows quarantine-free travel between both countries provided a range of conditions are met.
How many people are travelling to Australia, and how many are leaving?
Since Australia’s borders were closed to non-citizens and residents in March 2020, departures have generally been higher than arrivals.
Departures prior to the trans-Tasman travel bubble ranged between 30,000 and 60,000 per month, while arrivals have been lower, ranging between 15,000 and 35,000. Since the quarantine-free travel to NZ began, both figures have increased dramatically.
Why are people coming to Australia?
The number of Australian residents returning for the long term has been slowly building throughout the pandemic, from a few hundred per month early last year to well over 3,000 in recent months.
April was the first month since borders shut that arrivals of short-term visitors eclipsed residents returning – more than 20,000 arriving in one month alone. Australian residents returning for a short stay (12 months or less) has hovered between 7,000 and 17,000 per month since April last year.
However, the April figures include a large amount of travel from New Zealand, for which people are exempt from quarantine. To look at the categories of travellers who might be using the hotel quarantine system, we need to use another dataset published by the Australian Border Force (ABF) which makes it possible to exclude arrivals from New Zealand for the most recently recorded month of April.
This data shows more than half of the 23,800 arrivals in April, at least 56%, were residents returning from overseas, and 33% were visitors.
It’s also important to note that immediate family members of permanent residents are eligible to travel to Australia with an exemption, and would be counted as ‘visitors’.
The ABF released a media statement on Thursday which included figures showing more than 80% of “arrivals that are required to quarantine within the hotel quarantine caps are Australian citizens, permanent residents or their immediate family” for the months of February to June.
When people travel to Australia, they’re required to complete an inbound passenger card which records the reason for their travel.
Seeing friends and relatives has consistently been the biggest reason visitors declared in the past year. Since the New Zealand travel bubble opened in April this category more than doubled from the 7,000 – 10,000 in preceding months, to over 20,000.
The reasons given on the passenger card are entirely separate to the reasons someone might have given for their travel exemption – for example, the data includes a number of people who said they were travelling for a holiday prior to the NZ travel bubble being open, and holidaying is not a valid reason for a travel exemption.
In March 2021, 2,140 (12.6%) of short-term visitors and residents arriving said they were travelling for “business”.
The reasons given for travel have changed significantly since before the pandemic – those coming for holidays are now just a couple of percentage points compared to almost 50% of all arrivals two years ago. Visitors coming for employment and visiting friends and relatives are both well up from pre-pandemic levels.
Where are people travelling from?
For short-term visitors in recent months, the most common countries of origin are New Zealand, the US, UK and India.
Total arrivals by state
New South Wales has consistently taken more arrivals than other states throughout the pandemic. Between May 2020 and 2021 it took more than twice as many arrivals as Queensland, the next largest – 200,000 to 96,000.
Labor state premiers Daniel Andrews, Annastacia Palaszczuk and Mark McGowan have called for the international arrivals cap to be significantly lowered in recent days. NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian has called for other states to do their “fair share”.
In April and May this year, NSW received more than a quarter of total international arrivals.
