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SEPTEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Sep 04	Aug 04 to Sep 04	Sep 03 to Sep 04
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	438.6	0.5	3.8
	Seasonally adjusted	433.8	-0.3	. .
	Original	395.6	. .	. .
Short-term resident departures
	Trend	362.8	0.3	18.8
	Seasonally adjusted	368.7	4.2	. .
	Original	437.9	. .	. .
. . not applicable

Visitor arrivals, Short-term

Resident departures, Short-term

SEPTEMBER KEY POINTS


TREND ESTIMATES

• The trend estimate for short-term visitor arrivals to Australia during September 2004 (438,600 movements) increased by 0.5% compared with August 2004. This followed monthly increases of 0.6% for July and 0.5% for August 2004.
• Currently, short-term visitor arrivals are 3.3% higher than when the series last troughed in March 2004 (424,500 movements).
• During September 2004, short-term resident departures (362,800 movements) increased by 0.3% compared with the previous month and followed increases of 0.6% for both July and August 2004.
• Short-term resident departures have recorded steady growth over the past year, however, recent estimates indicate this growth rate is slowing. Compared with September 2003 (305,300 movements), short-term resident departures are up by 18.8%.

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for short-term visitor arrivals during September 2004 (433,800 movements) decreased by 0.3% compared with August 2004. This followed an increase of 1.3% for July and a decrease of 0.5% for August 2004.
• Short-term resident departures for September 2004 (368,700 movements) increased by 4.2% compared with August 2004 and followed decreases of 0.5% for July and 2.0% for August 2004.

• In original terms, there were 395,600 short-term visitor arrival movements to Australia during September 2004.
• There were 437,900 short-term resident departures during September 2004.

DATA NOTES

This publication contains movement data. Care should be taken when interpreting this movement data as 'people'. See paragraph 5 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

Calculations of percentage and numeric change are based on unrounded data. See paragraph 12 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

FORTHCOMING CHANGES

As of the November 2004 issue, this publication will only be available electronically. As a result of this change, overseas arrivals and departures data will be released earlier than previously advised. The revised release dates are presented above.

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.

MAIN FEATURES


SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS

The following table presents the top ten source countries (based on original estimates) for short-term visitor arrivals during September 2004. Seasonally adjusted and trend estimates are also presented for these countries, along with the trend percentage change compared with August 2004 and September 2003.

Short-term Visitor Arrivals, Major Source Countries - September 2004
	Trend	Seasonally Adjusted	Original	Aug 04 to Sep 04	Sep 03 to Sep 04
	'000	'000	'000	Trend % change	Trend % change
New Zealand	89.0	86.1	107.9	0.6	24.2
Japan	60.9	68.0	58.0	3.0	-1.4
United Kingdom	56.8	55.8	40.4	-0.7	-1.2
United States of America	37.3	35.8	26.4	-0.1	5.5
China	19.2	(a)np	16.4	0.5	8.2
Singapore	19.6	19.2	15.7	-	-12.1
Korea	18.2	18.7	13.8	1.0	-5.8
Germany	11.8	11.5	11.2	1.4	-1.5
Malaysia	15.4	8.3	10.4	0.9	-0.8
Hong Kong	11.1	11.7	9.8	0.7	-3.7
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)
(a) Seasonally adjusted data for short-term visitor arrivals from China is of an unpublishable standard.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES

The following table presents the top ten destinations (based on original estimates), for short-term resident departures during September 2004. Seasonally adjusted and trend estimates are also presented for these countries, along with the trend percentage change compared with August 2004 and September 2003.

Short-term Resident Departures, Major Destinations - September 2004
	Trend	Seasonally Adjusted	Original	Aug 04 to Sep 04	Sep 03 to Sep 04
	'000	'000	'000	Trend % change	Trend % change
New Zealand	70.0	70.2	73.6	1.5	23.9
United Kingdom	30.5	30.1	39.0	-0.5	11.8
United States of America	31.6	31.6	38.3	-0.9	29.0
Indonesia	24.2	23.0	31.7	-4.9	(a)np
China	16.1	15.7	22.7	1.5	36.1
Thailand	14.7	15.6	20.6	0.3	0.4
Fiji	14.3	14.9	18.8	0.8	8.1
Italy	7.9	8.4	16.3	2.0	19.3
Singapore	13.0	13.2	14.7	0.5	4.5
Malaysia	11.4	12.4	14.4	0.7	11.6
(a) not available for publication, due to break in the trend series from December 2003

Increases in the Last Ten Years

According to trend estimates, short-term resident departures have been increasing steadily for the last seventeen months and are now at their highest point for the last ten years. This follows declines for most of the months from November 2002 to April 2003, and for each month of 2001. Prior to this, short-term resident departures had been increasing for most months since September 1994. Since October 2003, each month has seen the highest number of short-term resident departures on a trend basis on record to that month.

Trend estimates increased by a monthly average of 1.5% for each month from April to November 2003, and by a monthly average of 0.9% from December 2003 to September 2004. There was a break in the trend series from October 2002 and December 2003. See paragraph 22 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

short-term resident departures

Statistics on overseas arrivals and departures relate to the number of movements of travellers rather than the number of travellers. Therefore, care should be taken when using long-term arrivals data as it is known some individuals who travel multiple times in a year are counted each time they cross Australia's borders (see paragraph 5 of the Explanatory Notes). Long-term arrivals in this publication are not an appropriate source of migration statistics. For further information refer to Australian Demographic Statistics (cat. no. 3101.0).

There were 4,200 Australian residents departing permanently from Australia during September 2004, an increase of 5% compared with September 2003 (3,990 movements).

STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

The above presentation of movements in estimates does not take into account whether the change in movement is statistically significant. Care should be taken when interpreting the impact of numeric and/or percentage change. Please see the Standard Errors section on page 31 for more detail.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED AND TREND ESTIMATES


SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS

Selected Source Countries

The graphs presented below illustrate the impact of the 2003 Rugby World Cup on arrivals from the United Kingdom in the later half of 2003, and the significant impact of SARS on arrivals from Japan. Arrivals from the United States of America have been increasing since November 2003, while arrivals from New Zealand have increased steadily since February 2003.

New Zealand

United Kingdom

Japan

United States of America

New Zealand

United States of America

Indonesia