Is the Australian Landing Card Still Necessary in the Written Form?

[AustraliaPoochie]

Will probably try the digital IPC next time I come back from NZ via BNE.
Will look at esim with roaming, as an add on to my Aus sim on smartphone.

 

[anat0l]

Still it feels weird not to have to sit on the flight filling out the yellow card.

My last flight into AU was on CX. I sat in the second Y cabin and while I got an IPC, they ran out of them about 2 rows behind me. Since they hand them out starting at the first row of each cabin, about 40% of Y did not receive an IPC to fill in on the flight. Most would have had no choice but to collect one on arrival in SYD to fill out.

I was also surprised that they did not have any Chinese IPCs. The couple next to me had very poor English and were relying on a pocket translator to make sense of the card and especially the customs declaration questions. Now we could argue that if you can't read the IPC in English enough to fill it in correctly and truthfully, you don't deserve to come to Australia, but I guess a digital IPC could also help in this regard if it offered multiple languages, though in the case of the couple next to me, they were quite elderly, so chances of them being competent to use their smartphone, let alone use an app / website that would initially be in English, is also likely quite low.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

There would be ones (IPCs) in Mandarin, on the rows of it, in the arrivals zone, but new comers, or first time visitors wouldnt know about it, that they can fill it out later, of course, need a biro/pen.
But then, apart from the IPC, then there is the smartgate question, that one is in English only.
First you have to go to the shoulder high machine, which prints out a photo of/from your passport, on flimsy off white thin yellow paper... then to the machine that has the bright light to scan face...
But that couple would probably have gone to a staffed counter, and they would have gotten a Chinese (Mandarin) ABF speaker to converse with them.
But as they would have had their passport shown to check in at HKG, guess ABF would have known the couple was coming on the flight.