1Hi everyone, and welcome to Sydney Airport.
2Today, I'll be giving you the inside information on the day-to-day operations of the Australian Quarantine Service here.
3We hope to provide you with a better understanding of why such heavy security regulations are necessary
4by educating you on how we operate and why we do the things we do.
5We're not here to try to persuade you to fly through Sydney Airport,
6though we hope you'll find your experience relatively stress-free and comfortable.
7First things first, our personnel.
8Can anyone guess how many people work at Sydney Airport?
9We have 200 alone working in Terminal 2,
10so can you guess how many in the whole airport?
11I heard someone say 360, that's getting closer...
12What?
13Did someone say 2,000?
14That's way too high.
15Sydney Airport actually employs 440 people.
16A lot, right?
17And about half of those employees work in security-related matters.
18Moving on to our not-so-human employees,
19let's come and see our favourite pooch, Milton.
20Milton is our best drug-sniffing dog on the force.
21He's friendly to most people - you can even come pet him at the end of our tour.
22Burnouts beware, though, he'll find everything.
23Notice that even though there are so many of us around him, Milton stays quite calm.
24This is the precise reason he was chosen for the job.
25Dogs that are chosen are not predisposed to sniff out different narcotics,
26that's something we teach them already.
27So here's a part of the airport most people never notice - the cargo transport terminal.
28This is where packages are shipped to and from.
29Normally we ship around 4,400 packages per month.
30In this airport alone, over 52,000 packages were shipped in and out over the past year.
31We ship to and from 170 different countries.
32Not bad, eh?
33Probably it will go up to over 72,000 packages this year.
34And despite over 100 flights in and out of here daily,
35the number of lost or delayed packages is impressively low.
36If you send your package through here, rest assured we'll get it where it's going.
37Let's move on to the area most of us are familiar with, the passenger terminals.
38In order to be allowed into this area, you must pass through security with your ticket
39and if you're travelling internationally, your passport.
40If you're travelling domestically, you just need a legal form of ID.
41If you don't have those, you will not be allowed to pass through security and board your flight.
42During the security scan,
43your carry-on items will be checked for dangerous items such as weapons,
44sharp objects, and liquids that exceed our specified limit.
45If you attempt to pass any of the prohibited items on this list posted at the entrance,
46you are still allowed to board the plane,
47but you'll be given a warning and your item will be confiscated.
48Don't worry, we will not arrest you for having too much shampoo in your bag, or anything like that.
49We also search your carry-ons and parcels for any perishable items.
50We prohibit the transportation of local vegetation
51and prohibit parcels containing any insects in them.
52You may or may not have learned about this in Biology class,
53but when some plants are introduced to a new environment,
54they spread wildly and wipe out the current species around it.
55It is important to control the introduction of new plants into an ecosystem,
56so we must prohibit the transport of any fertile seeds.
57So what happens to parcels containing possibly suspicious items?
58It's of course something we do not take lightly here.
59If an object passes through the scanner that appears suspicious in any way,
60it is separated out for manual search by a member of our trained security personnel.
61If an illegal plant or simple sharp object like a pocket knife is found,
62it is simply disposed of in our biohazard waste containers,
63and the package itself is returned to the sender
64(or passenger, if it is for a passenger flight).
65More serious weapons are reported to higher authorities for investigation.
66As far as parcel security, the material of the parcel is important.
67For shipped goods, the most common material used (and the most widely accepted) is paper.
68Make sure it is packed sturdy enough, with no rips or tears.
69We've definitely had packages rip open before due to haphazard packing.
70A more common problem, though, is the package labels.
71When an item does not make it to the right place, this is the most common reason.
72The label may not be in the right place or marked clearly enough.
73If you're receiving any items from abroad that must be declared,
74please remember our guidelines in order to ensure the timely delivery of your item.
75Make sure it is packed correctly,
76and we ask that you notify customs between 2 and 10 days within the item's scheduled arrival date.
77Okay, before we move on, are there any questions?