Originally Posted by
supine
What you should do is look for the border agent who is sometimes guarding a side door and letting selected people (nothing to declare, less suspect origins) skip customs checks.
There are also sometimes border agents roaming the baggage area and engaging one of them with an innocuous question is often a way to get your declaration prechecked and be told to use the quick exit.
Not sure what the "quick exit" is. Since 2010 I have ticked no to every box on the customs form (sometimes if I had to go through manual immigration, the officer would write a letter on the form). I then follow the normal customs route and the officer collecting the customs forms has always directed me straight out to landside. Never had to wait more than a few seconds.
I have never approached any roaming officer but once one of them approached me, they looked at my form and asked "are you sure you have nothing to declare", I said yes, they asked the same thing another 3 times, then went away. They didn't write on my form so that interaction didn't achieve anything. (There were no dogs either.) Again when I went to the exit, the officer collecting the forms just directed me straight out.
I had not entered Australia since 2019 until this month. So I was interested to see if anything had changed, but no, I was again directed straight out with no further checks. 2009 was the last time I saw every arriving passenger being directed for a manual inspection.