- Process goes on trial in Canberra this year
- No passports will be shown by 2019
Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection will use facial recognition rather than passports to process arrivals by March 2019, the Fairfax group reported on Sunday .
Under the scheme, electronic stations and automatic triage will replace manned stations and all incoming paper passenger cards will be abolished. Visitors to Australia from Ireland currently apply for an e-visa.
The government aims to have 90pc of travellers processed automatically, with no human involvement at all, by March 2019. Passengers will not need to show their passports. Instead they will be processed by biometric recognition of their faces, irises and/or fingerprints.
Fairfax reported the department wants to trial the technology in July at Canberra airport, which handles limited flights to New Zealand and Singapore, and introduce it at a major airport in November. The move is the next stage of the Seamless Traveller initiative announced in 2015 and will replace existing SmartGates used to scan passports of people travelling to Australia.
John Coyne, head of border security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Fairfax passengers will “literally just walk out like at a domestic airport using biometric technology. Our ability to harness the power of big data is increasing exponentially.
