One of the key advisers to John Howard during his prime ministership, Sydney Airport Corporation chairman Max Moore-Wilton, says Australia's "stupid" quarantine inspections are burdening international tourists with long delays and making them feel unwelcome.
Mr Moore-Wilton says the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service's (AQIS) target to screen 80 per cent of international visitors' luggage is "unsustainable, unnecessary and over the top".
"It's a problem that is getting worse and as more and more people come to Australia, the queues are going to get longer and longer," he told ABC radio's morning show in Sydney.
The former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet - who left his position in 2002 to join Sydney Airport Corporation - says the quarantine policy was introduced in 2001 to deal with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain.
Mr Moore-Wilton says the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service's (AQIS) target to screen 80 per cent of international visitors' luggage is "unsustainable, unnecessary and over the top".
"It's a problem that is getting worse and as more and more people come to Australia, the queues are going to get longer and longer," he told ABC radio's morning show in Sydney.
The former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet - who left his position in 2002 to join Sydney Airport Corporation - says the quarantine policy was introduced in 2001 to deal with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain.
"There is no current outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain or anywhere else that I'm aware of," he said. "We are applying a regime as if there is an immediate risk to Australia's biosecurity ...
"It's a mindless, not risk-assessment-based system."
He has told ABC 702 Local Radio in Sydney such stringent checks do not happen anywhere else in the world.
"There are literally hundreds of thousands of regular travellers, like me, going through Sydney that are treated every day as if they were a risk. That is stupid."
Mr Moore-Wilton believes tourists are becoming frustrated by long queues and the current regime needs reform.
"I'm asking for a risk-based assessment on a day-to-day basis by intelligent officials as to the risk of passengers threatening our biosecurity," he said.
But AQIS says strict baggage screening procedures at Sydney Airport are necessary to prevent the introduction of diseases.
AQIS spokesman Carson Creagh says diseases such as bird flu pose a constant risk to Australia.
"We are seizing around 12 tonnes of avian influenza risk material coming in simply through airports every year," he said.
"We can't afford to back away from inspection in that area."
Of course, as I've previously noted the problem is not confined to Sydney airport, nor to the quarantine people, though it worries me that Mr Creagh appears to believe that the best way to detect "avian influenza risk material" is to use the
Instead of requiring almost all travellers to submit to luggage searches like the one I was subjected to at Adelaide Airport on 31 October (and which revealed nothing untoward) why not seek a bit more cooperation from the public, eg by providing more pre-arrival information to travellers so that they can, in a manner of speaking, separate their own grain from their chaff? Or would the challenge of translating "avian influenza risk material" into plain English, let alone other languages, be too much to ask of Mr Creagh and his offsiders?
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