The concept of a COVID-19 vaccination passport is a hotly debated topic in Australia, but the tourism industry says it needs to be on the cards in the short term.

CEO of the Tourism and Transport Forum, Margy Osmond, said there were details to be worked out but they were inevitable for people coming in and out of Australia.

“I think it’s an idea that absolutely has to be discussed at this point in time, certainly some kind of vaccination passport is going to apply to international travel in and out of Australia, and there’s a huge amount of work being done on that at the moment.

“If you actually take a moment to look at what’s happening in different parts of the world, in France they have a thing called a pass sanitaire and they have a special app in addition to that that applies to people that both live in France and elsewhere.

“You can’t go to a restaurant, or a museum or a cinema or a theatre or any kind of attraction now as a traveller in France without having one of these capacities and being able to show you’re vaccinated.

“It’s not unique, it’s happening throughout most of the European Union.

“In the US now, things like big football games, they are actually requiring all of that players to be vaccinated, all of the staff in the stadium, and everybody coming to the event to be vaccinated.”

She said it wouldn’t necessarily need to be a permanent arrangement, but might work in the next 12 months or so.

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