Note: Post-validation of this product uncovered inaccuracies in certain figures under Intended Length of Stay for Tables 6 and 10. Please see the 'Changes in this Issue' section below for further detail.

DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Dec '16	Nov '16 to Dec '16	Dec '15 to Dec '16
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	708.2	0.2	8.7
	Seasonally adjusted	706.9	0.6	..
	Original	971.8	..	..
Short-term resident departures
	Trend	823.8	-0.3	1.7
	Seasonally adjusted	828.3	2.0	..
	Original	1127.9	..	..
. . 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 2016 (708,200 movements) increased 0.2%, compared with November 2016 (706,900 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.4% in October 2016 and 0.3% in November 2016. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 8.7% higher than in December 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During December 2016, short-term visitor arrivals (706,900 movements) increased 0.6% compared with November 2016 (703,100 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 0.2% in October 2016 and a monthly decrease of 0.8% in November 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 971,800 short-term visitor arrivals to Australia in December 2016.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES FROM AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term resident departures during December 2016 (823,800 movements) decreased 0.3%, compared with November 2016 (826,000 movements). This followed monthly decreases of 0.1% in October 2016 and 0.2% in November 2016. The current trend estimate for departures is 1.7% higher than in December 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During December 2016, short-term resident departures (828,300 movements) increased 2.0% compared with November 2016 (812,100 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 2.4% in October 2016 and a monthly decrease of 3.7% in November 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 1,127,900 short-term resident departures from Australia in December 2016.

NOTES


FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
January 2017	14 March 2017
February 2017	12 April 2017
March 2017	12 May 2017
April 2017	13 June 2017
May 2017	14 July 2017
June 2017	15 August 2017

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 34 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) has rolled out new technologies to streamline and strengthen border operations. Departure SmartGates are currently in use at all international airports in Australia for processing passengers leaving the country. Passengers using Departure SmartGates are required to place their outgoing passenger card in drop boxes located near the Departure SmartGate rather than handing them to Australian Border Force officers.

Coinciding with the roll-out of Departure SmartGates, there has been an increase in outgoing passenger cards not being collected due to passengers failing to place their cards into the drop boxes. The ABS and DIBP are working together to mitigate this issue and to minimise the impact on data quality.

For December 2016, the ABS added 251,513 records to account for missing outgoing passenger cards. The ABS also added 510 records to account for a higher level of missing incoming passenger cards. A total of 252,023 missing records were added to the overseas arrivals and departures data for December 2016. For further information, see Section 7 of the Data Quality Issues (Appendix 2) in the left hand side navigation bar under the Explanatory Notes tab.

For December 2016, post-validation of the November 2016 issue of this product uncovered inaccuracies in certain figures under Intended Length of Stay for Tables 6 and 10. Further investigation identified the cause as a coding miscalculation for the following categories for the months January 1991 to November 2016 inclusive: '1 and under 2 months', '2 and under 3 months', '3 and under 6 months' and '6 and under 12 months'.

These errors have now been corrected in this issue. The dataset relating to Intended Length of Stay has been recoded and rebuilt to ensure data accuracy for the current and previous month's figures in this release, and ongoing accuracy for future releases. Figures for 'Under 1 week', '1 and under 2 weeks', '2 weeks and under 1 month' and 'Total' were not affected, nor were figures outside the Intended Length of Stay variable.

INQUIRIES

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