FEBRUARY KEY FIGURES

		Feb '16	Jan '16 to Feb '16	Feb '15 to Feb '16
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	652.3	0.1	8.8
	Seasonally adjusted	639.4	-2.7	. .
	Original	796.7	. .	. .
Short-term resident departures
	Trend	810.6	0.1	4.6
	Seasonally adjusted	792.1	-3.3	. .
	Original	577.6	. .	. .
. . not applicable

Visitor arrivals, Short-term

Resident departures, Short-term

FEBRUARY KEY POINTS
SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS TO AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term visitor arrivals during February 2016 (652,300 movements) increased 0.1%, compared with January 2016 (651,600 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.6% in December 2015 and 0.4% in January 2016. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 8.8% higher than in February 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During February 2016, short-term visitor arrivals (639,400 movements) decreased 2.7% compared with January 2016 (657,400 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 2.0% in December 2015 and little change in January 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 796,700 short-term visitor arrivals to Australia in February 2016.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES FROM AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term resident departures during February 2016 (810,600 movements) increased 0.1%, compared with January 2016 (809,900 movements). This followed a monthly increases of 0.5% in December 2015 and 0.3% in January 2016. The current trend estimate for departures is 4.6% higher than in February 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During February 2016, short-term resident departures (792,100 movements) decreased 3.3% compared with January 2016 (819,400 movements). This followed monthly increases of 4.1% in December 2015 and 0.3% in January 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 577,600 short-term resident departures from Australia in February 2016.

NOTES


FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
March 2016	6 May 2016
April 2016	3 June 2016
May 2016	6 July 2016
June 2016	4 August 2016
July 2016	9 September 2016
August 2016	10 October 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) is progressively rolling out new technologies to streamline and strengthen border operations. In Australia’s international airports Departure SmartGates are currently in use at Kingsford Smith (Sydney), Eagle Farm (Brisbane) and Tullamarine (Melbourne) for processing passengers leaving Australia. Passengers using Departure SmartGates 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 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 February 2016, the ABS added 128,559 records to account for outgoing passenger cards missing from Kingsford Smith, Tullamarine, Eagle Farm and Adelaide. The ABS also added 96 records to account for a higher level of missing incoming passenger cards than expected from Darwin and Cairns airports. A total of 128,655 missing records were added to the overseas arrivals and departures data for February. 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 will introduce a new method to accommodate higher numbers of missing passenger cards. A revision will also be undertaken of data from October 2014 onwards when a higher number of missing passenger cards occurred due to passenger card processing issues at DIBP. This will improve the quality of some variables and reduce reliance on the use of imputations. The release of the new method and revised data back to October 2014 is scheduled for 6 May 2016 with the release of Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, Mar 2016 (cat. no. 3401.0).

INQUIRIES

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