OCTOBER KEY FIGURES

		Oct '16	Sep '16 to Oct '16	Oct '15 to Oct '16
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	709.3	0.6	11.1
	Seasonally adjusted	713.3	0.3	..
	Original	694.3	..	..
Short-term resident departures
	Trend	837.6	0.4	4.6
	Seasonally adjusted	845.3	2.2	..
	Original	779.4	..	..
. . not applicable

Visitor arrivals, Short-term

Resident departures, Short-term

OCTOBER KEY POINTS

SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS TO AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term visitor arrivals during October 2016 (709,300 movements) increased 0.6%, compared with September 2016 (705,100 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.8% in August 2016 and 0.7% in September 2016. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 11.1% higher than in October 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During October 2016, short-term visitor arrivals (713,300 movements) increased 0.3% compared with September 2016 (710,900 movements). This followed a monthly decrease of 0.1% in August 2016 and a monthly increase of 2.7% in September 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 694,300 short-term visitor arrivals to Australia in October 2016.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES FROM AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term resident departures during October 2016 (837,600 movements) increased 0.4%, compared with September 2016 (834,100 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 0.4% in August 2016 and 0.3% in September 2016. The current trend estimate for departures is 4.6% higher than in October 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During October 2016, short-term resident departures (845,300 movements) increased 2.2% compared with September 2016 (827,000 movements). This followed monthly decreases of 0.7% in August 2016 and 0.2% in September 2016.
• Original estimates: There were 779,400 short-term resident departures from Australia in October 2016.

NOTES


FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
November 2016	16 January 2017
December 2016	13 February 2017
January 2017 February 2017	14 March 2017 12 April 2017
March 2017	12 May 2017
April 2017	13 June 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 October 2016, the ABS added 175,511 records to account for missing outgoing passenger cards. The ABS also added 76 records to account for a higher level of missing incoming passenger cards. A total of 175,587 missing records were added to the overseas arrivals and departures data for October 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.


INQUIRIES

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