Winston Aldworth: No end in sight for NZ's airport departure cards

Australia is going to get rid of departure cards at airports - why don't we follow suit? Photo / Greg Bowker

I hate it when Australians do something sensible and vaguely progressive before us.

New Zealand has generally been better at getting on the right side of history than our XXXX-swilling, transtasman cousins. We had important things such as universal suffrage, good craft beer and eftpos before them. We even declared war on the Nazis while our sunbaked pals were busy rounding up dingoes, singing Abba songs and starting fights on the terraces of one-day cricket matches. And let's not start on race relations.

So it was with shock and a little disappointment that I learned last week that Australia has confirmed plans to get rid of departure cards at airports while we're still dragging our feet.

Their green departure card — the Outgoing Passenger Card (OPC) to give the thing its full name — is headed for the dustbin. Soon to be followed by the orange Incoming Passenger Card. At some departure points — notably Sydney — Aussie Customs officials are no longer collecting the paper OPCs.

Well done, cobbers! Bad luck if you're flying out of New Zealand, where officials still insist you fill out an orange departure card. It is an offence not to do so.

For most travellers, these cards take between two to three minutes to fill out. In April, 244,200 Kiwis flew out of New Zealand. At two minutes per form, that's around 347 days worth of labour spent scribbling out needless paperwork. And that's not even counting foreign travellers. I'd rather spend the time saying farewell to loved ones or mooching around the duty-free store.

There are better, smarter ways to access the information the departure cards contain. In a digital age of biometric scanning, and apps that can order a flat white in a Koru Lounge so the coffee is waiting for you as you walk in the door, departure cards are a tedious anachronism, an irritant and a waste of time.

A simple electronic scan of my passport will tell you I was in the United States 10 days ago and Australia a month before that. It'll tell you where I live and how old I am — so why are we having to write down the same information? You hand the departure card to one Customs officer, then scan your passport (which contains most of the same information) in front of another Customs office.

"Removing paper-based manual processes is integral to achieving a seamless and automated traveller experience," the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection said in a statement last week. Too right, Diggers!

The Aussies don't have a timeline for getting rid of the departure cards yet, but they have confirmed the cards are going to be ditched.

Here in New Zealand, we're playing catch up. A spokesperson for Statistics NZ told me they are considering getting rid of departure cards.

"But no decision or timeline has been finalised," they added.

No decision. So, at this stage, we don't even know if we'll be rid of the orange cards.

"One of the options is to remove the card in line with Better Public Services goals, which would also be in line with moves in Australia. So an opportunity exists for New Zealand to improve public outcomes through the streamlining of the departure process at New Zealand ports.

"While this is being actively pursued we have not finalised the methodology or the approach we will be taking."

At this rate, Australia will be rid of these cards before us. It's time we took the lead. Ditch the departure cards before our cousins across the Ditch do the smarter thing.