New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced that she is considering forming a considering forming trans-Tasman travel bubble directly between Australian states and Aotearoa, instead of a nationwide agreement.
The announcement came after Australia’s decision to close borders for 72 hours following New Zealand health authorities identifying the first case of coronavirus in the community in two months.
The Federal Government suspended quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders arriving in Australia for 72 hours after a South African strain of the virus was identified in a 56-year-old woman.
New Zealand authorities detailed that the woman likely contracted the variant of coronavirus from a returned traveller on the same floor as her room in an Auckland quarantine hotel.
Jacinda Ardern expressed disappointment in the Federal Government’s decision to close the borders to New Zealanders, emphasising that she had full confidence in New Zealand’s contact tracing efforts.
“I certainly shared my view that this was a situation that was well under control,” she said. “If we are to enter into a trans-Tasman bubble we will need to give people confidence that we won’t see closures at the border that happen with very short notice over incidents we believe can be well-managed domestically.”
Although Ardern is considering the possibility of allowing travel between New Zealand and certain Australian states, she has outlined her concern that New Zealanders would need to be “vaccinated and protected” before opening the borders to foreign travellers.
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“New Zealand will only truly feel like it returns to normal when there is a certain level of normality in the rest of the world, too,” Ardern said during her first press conference of 2021. “But given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year.
“For travel to restart, we need one of two things: we either need the confidence that being vaccinated means you don’t pass Covid-19 on to others – and we don’t know that yet; or we need enough of our population to be vaccinated and protected that people can safely re-enter New Zealand. Both possibilities will take some time.”
