Australia’s Digital Arrivals Card: Melbourne Joins the Shift Away from the Orange Paper Form

After decades of handing passengers a small orange card to fill out with a borrowed pen somewhere over the Pacific, Australia is finally — if cautiously — moving towards a fully digital arrivals process. Melbourne Airport has become the latest Australian gateway to adopt the Australia Travel Declaration (ATD), joining Sydney and Brisbane in trialling the digital replacement for the long-maligned incoming passenger card.

The move has been welcomed by travellers and airport operators alike. As Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus put it plainly, the international arrivals process is one of the airport’s biggest passenger pain points — making the extension of the ATD trial to Melbourne a genuinely meaningful step forward for the millions of international travellers who pass through the airport each year.

What Is the Australia Travel Declaration?

The Australia Travel Declaration (ATD) is a digital alternative to the paper-based incoming passenger card that international travellers have been required to complete upon arriving in Australia for decades. Rather than filling out a physical form on board the aircraft, passengers complete the declaration digitally up to three days before arrival.

The ATD is currently integrated into the Qantas app, where passengers fill out their declaration and receive a digital pass containing a QR code — delivered both through the app and to their nominated email address. Upon arrival, the QR code is presented to Australian Border Force (ABF) officers in place of the paper card, enabling a faster and smoother passage through border controls.

Key features of the Australia Travel Declaration include:

• Three-day completion window — passengers can fill out their declaration anytime in the three days prior to arrival, reducing last-minute on-board scrambling
• QR code clearance — a digital pass delivered via the Qantas app and email replaces the physical card at the border
• Paper card option retained — travellers who prefer the existing paper form can still use it during the trial phase
• Swift border processing — the QR code system is designed to accelerate clearance times through ABF checkpoints on arrival

Melbourne’s Limited Initial Rollout

While the news is encouraging, the current Melbourne rollout is notably restricted in scope. The ATD is initially available only to passengers arriving on two specific Qantas flights — QF154 from Auckland and QF178 from Queenstown. Additional international Qantas flights into Melbourne are expected to be added progressively over the coming weeks.

For everyone else — passengers arriving on any other airline or any other route — the orange paper card remains firmly in play for the time being. The ABF has indicated that other airlines will be considered as the programme moves beyond its current pilot phase, but no firm timeline has been announced.

Australia’s Third Attempt at Going Digital

The ATD is not Australia’s first attempt to replace the paper arrivals card — it is, remarkably, the third. The history of this particular reform is one of good intentions repeatedly undermined by poor execution.

The first attempt came as part of the Government’s ‘Seamless Traveller’ initiative of 2016, which successfully introduced passport smartgates using facial recognition technology but failed to deliver its planned digital arrivals card trial, which was scheduled for early 2018 and never materialised.

The second attempt was considerably more expensive and considerably more embarrassing. Global IT firm Accenture spent $60 million in taxpayer funds over three years developing the Digital Passenger Declaration platform, including a smartphone app that launched in February 2022 as post-pandemic travel resumed. It was, by almost universal account, extraordinarily poor — and was axed after just five months in July 2022.

That troubled history goes some way to explaining the ABF’s conspicuously cautious approach with the ATD. The declaration has been in what is officially described as a trial phase since October 2024 — meaning it has now been in testing for nearly two years across more than 380,000 travellers without being formally launched as a full national service.

What Comes Next for the ATD

The Australian Border Force has confirmed that the ATD will eventually operate through its own Government-built website and dedicated app, independent of any individual airline platform. This would open the system to passengers across all international carriers rather than being limited to Qantas customers.

The question that many frequent travellers are asking is simply — when? Two years into a trial that has already processed hundreds of thousands of passengers without apparent incident, the case for a full national launch is compelling. The staged, airline-specific rollout approach may have been the right strategy to avoid a third high-profile failure, but the cautious pace is beginning to test the patience of travellers and industry stakeholders alike.

For now, if you are flying into Melbourne on a Qantas service from New Zealand, the orange card is a thing of the past. For everyone else — keep a pen handy.