Editorial: Auckland Airport queues and the biosecurity border balance

Long queues at Auckland International Airport in September. Photo / James Ryan

EDITORIAL

There is something special about touching down on home soil.

For all the negative headlines about Kiwis leaving the country in droves amid any number of ills facing the country, that feeling you get flying in from abroad - particularly for those who may have been away for some time - can be quite emotional. The New Zealand-themed murals, recorded birdsong and the friendly “kia ora”s all help to create a vibrant welcome for homecomers and visitors alike - a sense of cultural identity, pride and anticipation.

And then there are the queues.

Airline passengers have been flooding the Herald with complaints about long delays at Auckland Airport’s immigration and biosecurity checkpoints over the past weeks. “Absolute zoo”, “madhouse”, “angry passengers desperate for toilets”, “children crying” and “totally disorganised” comprise just some of the comments.

It appears a perfect storm of bad weather, staff sickness, and the post-Covid travel bounceback have all contributed to the delays and bottlenecks, which look to have been at their worst when travellers are being processed at biosecurity screening checkpoints.

Thankfully, the feared school holiday mayhem seems to have been mitigated in part by a biosecurity screening express lane trial - for people with nothing to declare, but which is still checked by detector dogs - which the Ministry for Primary Industries says has made a big impact.

Phew! Travel can be stressful enough without added palaver - and when you get home, you just want to get home.

Any systems that can be implemented to make the process smoother are welcome, but remember the vital role those border checks provide in terms of safeguarding New Zealand.

Our native flora and fauna and natural environment are at constant risk, as is our primary sector. The tourism, horticulture, viticulture and agriculture industries - and all the people employed by them - are dependent on rigorous systems to keep out the destructive pests and diseases that could wreak havoc on our conservation estate and productive land, destroy livelihoods and decimate our economy.

The cost of identifying the source of any incursions and the action needed to contain or eliminate them is substantial.

More than $4 million was poured into netting 10 Queensland fruit flies in the Auckland scare of 2019. The cost of the successful eradication was seen as vital in order to protect our multi-million-dollar export fruit industry.

It has taken six years, but the last known infected property has just been declared free from Mycoplasma bovis, although the country has not been officially declared free of the disease yet. M. Bovis affected 280 properties, cost nearly $248m in compensation alone to farmers whose stock was culled, and was estimated to have cost well over $1 billion in lost production.

Invasive freshwater gold clams can produce 400 juveniles a day.

From stink bugs to exotic Caulerpa seaweed, the latest concern is the highly invasive gold clam Corbicula fluminea, or Asian clam, which can produce 400 juveniles a day and up to 70,000 a year.

Then there’s the ongoing fight against the likes of myrtle rust, wilding pines, wallabies, kauri dieback and other pests and diseases officially in “long-term management”, where the effort now goes into trying to contain their spread.

In comparison, the frustration of an airport queue, while undoubtedly inconvenient and tiresome at the end of an international flight, does seem a relatively small price to pay in an attempt to keep out the swarm of billion-dollar biosecurity threats at our borders.