Australian Embassy
China

Important News: Australia’s latest visa innovation for Chinese travellers

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Minister for Trade and Investment, The Hon Andrew Robb AO MP, announced the latest innovation in Australia’s visitor visa service for Chinese travellers on 10 April 2015 – 3 year validity visas for approved applicants in our eLodgement pilot. See the media release here.

In China, Australia is handling more visas than ever before, faster than ever before.

China overtook the UK as Australia’s largest source of visitor visas in 2014. There were over 600,000 visa finalisations, up 21.1% from the previous year.

80% of applications have been finalised within 5 working days over the past five months. see our processing times on our Embassy website

Australia is always looking to make our visa process faster and more convenient for Chinese travellers.

• We launched our online lodgement pilot for visitor visas in December 2014.

• In 2014, we extended validity of business visitor visas to three years.

• We have a convenient application process - label free travel and passport free applications for Chinese travellers.

• In Australian airports, we are trialling the use of SmartGate for Chinese passport holders.

• We will implement a Work and Holiday arrangement for up to 5,000 young Chinese people in 2015, allowing up to a year of travel and work in Australia.

These innovations are showing good results - Chinese New Year (CNY) 2015 has been our busiest season to date. Our offices across China finalised more than 124,000 applications in the lead up to the holiday break, faster than ever before.

Australia will keep innovating to provide fast and convenient visa services for genuine Chinese travellers. Watch this space for more information throughout 2015.
 

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Page last updated 14 April 2015