DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Dec '15	Nov '15 to Dec '15	Dec '14 to Dec '15
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	652.8	1.0	11.1
	Seasonally adjusted	659.8	2.2	-
	Original	897.7	-	-
Short-term resident departures
	Trend	809.5	0.6	5.7
	Seasonally adjusted	815.4	3.6	-
	Original	1088.6	-	-
. . not applicable

Visitor arrivals, Short-term

Resident departures, Short-term

DECEMBER KEY POINTS
SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS TO AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term visitor arrivals during December 2015 (652,800 movements) increased 1.0%, compared with November 2015 (646,400 movements). This followed monthly increases of 1.3% in October 2015 and 1.2% in November 2015. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 11.1% higher than in December 2014.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During December 2015, short-term visitor arrivals (659,800 movements) increased 2.2% compared with November 2015 (645,200 movements). This followed a monthly decrease of 1.0% in October 2015 and a monthly increase of 1.9% in November 2015.
• Original estimates: There were 897,700 short-term visitor arrivals to Australia in December 2015.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES FROM AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term resident departures during December 2015 (809,500 movements) increased 0.6%, compared with November 2015 (804,600 movements). This followed a monthly increases of 0.8% in October 2015 and 0.7% in November 2015. The current trend estimate for departures is 5.7% higher than in December 2014.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During December 2015, short-term resident departures (815,400 movements) increased 3.6% compared with November 2015 (787,300 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 4.1% in October 2015 and a monthly decrease of 2.6% in November 2015.
• Original estimates: There were 1,088,600 short-term resident departures from Australia in December 2015.

NOTES


FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
January 2016	7 March 2016
February 2016	7 April 2016
March 2016	6 May 2016
April 2016	3 June 2016
May 2016	6 July 2016
June 2016	4 August 2016

DATA NOTES

This release contains overseas movement data which should not be interpreted as 'persons'. See paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

The statistics in this release have been rounded. See paragraph 35 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) has commenced a transition to the Departure SmartGate system for processing passengers leaving Australia. These gates are progressively being rolled out at Australia's international airports and are currently in use at Kingsford Smith (Sydney), Eagle Farm (Brisbane) and Tullamarine (Melbourne). Passengers using Departure SmartGates are required to place their outgoing passenger card in drop boxes located near the Departure SmartGate rather than physically hand them to Australian Border Force officers.

Coinciding with the roll-out of these gates, there has been an increase in outgoing passenger cards not being collected due to passengers failing to place their outwards passenger cards into the drop boxes. The ABS and DIBP have been working together to mitigate this issue and to minimise the impact on data quality. To maintain quality, the ABS is using data from the DIBP Travel and Immigration Processing System (TRIPS) system.

For December 2015, the ABS added 108,582 records to account for outgoing passenger cards missing from Kingsford Smith, Eagle Farm and Tullamarine. This figure also included a high level of missing departure cards from Perth on 1 and 2 December. The ABS added 1,572 records to account for a high level of missing incoming passenger cards from Kingsford Smith (Sydney) Airport on 23 December. A total of 110,154 missing records were added to the overseas arrivals and departures data for December. Variables within these records that remained missing, due to the passenger card information not being available, were imputed. For further information, see the Data Quality Issues (Appendix 2) in the left hand side navigation bar under the Explanatory Notes tab.

To maintain data quality for Overseas Arrivals and Departures (OAD) statistics, the ABS is examining the potential use of other methodologies. Once this investigative work is complete, it is likely a revision will be undertaken by the ABS of previous months' data where a high count of missing passenger cards was recorded.

CHANGE TO RELEASE DATE FOR MIGRATION, AUSTRALIA 2014-15

The ABS has changed the release date for Migration, Australia, 2014-15 (cat. no. 3412.0) due to unforeseeable circumstances and to align this release with the availability of the ABS' regional internal migration estimates. The original release date of 25 February 2016 has been re-scheduled to Wednesday 30 March 2016.

CHANGES TO THE DECEMBER 2015 ISSUE

Please note the regular calendar year Feature Article will not be published in the December 2015 issue of Overseas Arrivals and Departures due to the issues noted above in the Changes in this Issue.

INQUIRIES

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