The Cairns Post

Poor first impression­s

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I MUST concur with Dave Sando. Internatio­nal airport disgrace (CP, 09/03).

I landed in Cairns at 5am on Thursday, March 7, on the second of two (onschedule) wide-body aircraft to arrive from Japan that morning.

The queue for immigratio­n was backed up through the duty-free shop and well into the concourse leading to it.

With just two immigratio­n officers at desks and three self-service machines (with another out-of-service), the long queue moved at glacial pace through an endless zigzag of controls set up to manage this presumably daily occurrence.

Meanwhile, baggage was arriving at carousels long before passengers, necessitat­ing them to be frequently stopped due to the volume of still unclaimed bags circulatin­g.

This Border Control service debacle must leave a very poor first impression to visitors to our region, a sentiment clearly articulate­d by some around me. Tom Asquith, Redlynch no slogans produced saying something like ‘keep overpopula­ting and you will perish’.

If overpopula­tion doesn’t scare the pants off you maybe robotics will.

In Western Australia a machine is being tested that can build a three-bedroom house to precise measuremen­ts in three days with only one person at the controls.

In China a new supermarke­t is in operation where only one of each item is on the shelves with an automated warehouse nearby.

You select what products you want by using your phone and pay for them at the same time and go to the checkout again using your phone to collect your items.

With our grossly overpopula­ted world and robotics, what is going to happen when billions become unemployed?

Business and politician­s keep using the word growth which in reality means greed.

What they should be doing is something about reducing the world’s human population in a sensible and steady way that we can all agree and prepare our world for a future that our children can live in. Alan Sparks, Bungalow 1894: Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for

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