Trans-Tasman bubble bursts
What was true in May remains true in July: the ball is squarely in Australia’s court.
‘V ery clearly, we are not where we wanted to be.’’ With those words, the Premier of the state of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, announced that 10 postcodes in the city of Melbourne were going into local lockdown, until at least the end of July.
In most parts of that great city, life goes on. But in 10 areas to the north and west, there are renewed stay-at-home orders and border patrols between suburbs.
Although some Australian states are much like New Zealand in that there seems to be no more community transmission of Covid-19, the resurgence or second wave in Victoria has been attributed in part to breaches of the hotel quarantine system. New Zealanders will look at that news and think how lucky we were during our own ‘‘border bungles’’ that now look over-hyped by comparison.
Yesterday Victoria had 73 new cases, up from 64 on Tuesday. There were 349 new cases across Australia during the preceding seven days, a leap of 140 per cent from the week before.
With this, the already mirage-like vision of a trans-Tasman travel bubble has receded even further. The bubble was an appealing image created during the level 4 lockdown as a shared reward to follow the national hardship endured by the team of 5 million. New Zealand was always keener on the bubble than Australia, partly because the logistics of different states with different rules complicated matters on the other side of the ditch.
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, an early bubble enthusiast, even proposed that New Zealand could open a shared travel zone with the state of Tasmania, which has traditionally been down the list of Australian destinations for New Zealand tourists and lacks direct flights. There were vague hopes that some kind of bubble could be created in time for the July school holidays.
Yet despite these overtures, and some excitement in Hobart, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison naturally seemed more interested in relaxing restrictions between states than thinking about opening up Australia to New Zealand. And what was true in May remains true in July: the ball is squarely in Australia’s court.
The Victorian outbreak has exploded a Covid-19 myth that was often heard during the early days of the New Zealand lockdown. This was the idea that Australia was somehow handling the crisis better than us, that its rules were much less restrictive and maintained a more open economy, while infection and death rates were comparable. A chorus said we should be more like Australia. But we haven’t heard that in a while.
New South Wales has only just eased its coronavirus restrictions, moving into a phase that still feels much less free than our current conditions under level 1. There continue to be distancing rules in indoor venues and strict limits on numbers on public transport and in outdoor venues, which can now seat up to only 25 per cent of their normal capacity.
The Victorian outbreak is also a reminder that, beyond our shores, the pandemic continues to rage. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, has warned that his country could see 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day as states reopen their economies.
Consecutive days without new cases in New Zealand, even in quarantine, could lull us back into a Covid fatigue that creates an impatience to open borders and return to business as usual. But most of the rest of the world is far from usual.