Imagine stepping off an international flight and bounding straight through the airport without needing to pluck a passport from your pocket.
No interactions with border force officers, no 20 questions, not even a stop-off at a "smart gate" to break your stride.
This is what Peter Dutton wants for Australian airports and it has industry insiders excited.
The home affairs minister has pitched his case for greater airport automation in his first major speech since taking on the portfolio.
Nearly 44 million travellers passed through Australian airports in the past year, with Border Force officers screening 42 million cargo consignments and issuing 8.4 million temporary visas.
The volume of passengers is expected to grow by up to 22 per cent within four years, with air cargo tipped to soar by 34 per cent.
Technology including smart gates have been rolled out in recent years to cope with the rapid growth.
But there's an even bigger picture in mind to cope with the churn of travellers.
"I want them to walk seamlessly down off the A380 (aircraft) and in time and we're not far off this, with facial recognition on the move, people's passports will stay in their pocket," Mr Dutton told the National Press Club this week.
"They will walk from the plane out to the kerbside and depart the airport."
Perhaps six or eight people may identified and pulled aside by officers.
"In the current model there's a lot of human interaction which I think needs to be more concentrated on those people with the highest risk," Mr Dutton said, adding the same applied to incoming mail and cargo.
This tarmac-to-kerb vision is not far off, with trials at Canberra Airport returning a 90 per cent strike rate.
"We're probably maybe a generation - a technology generation - off it. So, a couple of years. It's very close indeed," Mr Dutton said.
Margy Osmond from the Tourism and Transport Forum says longer queues and wait times in international terminals are creating poor first and last impressions for visitors to Australia.
The group believes it is "impractical and frankly unaffordable" to continually build or extend infrastructure to absorb visitor growth.
Ms Osmond said other ways must be found to slash queues, better use existing assets and enhance visitor experience.
"Greater automation of the passport check system is the most logical and beneficial place to start," she told AAP.
However, while the forum backs the facial recognition rollout, it's most pressing priority is biometric screening on trans-Tasman flights.
More broadly, Mr Dutton believes Australia's visa system is too complex.
About $100 million has been tipped into a visa risk assessment program to identify and prevent potential threats arriving.
Australian Associated Press
