Reopening
A trans-Tasman bubble could still be months away, as Australian states squabble and New Zealand takes a wait-and-see approach. But others argue it would be safe and provide an economic lifeline, allowing the border to open sooner. By Luke Malpass and Beva
EPIDEMIOLOGIST Michael Baker says he’d happily jump on a plane to Sydney tomorrow to see his brother if the borders were to reopen.
The billions of dollars in travel and trade that flow annually between New Zealand and its nearest neighbour are seen as a salvation that could keep hundreds of businesses afloat.
And Baker, a University of Otago public health professor and expert on pandemics, says a gradual reopening of the borders could happen ‘‘quite soon’’, as long as the risk was carefully managed.
‘‘I’d happily hop on a plane tomorrow to visit my brother who’s a GP in Sydney.’’
Baker’s brother has been diagnosing people with Covid-19 and his sister-in-law is also an epidemiologist, and they’ve been keeping him up to speed with events there.
‘‘It’s all a matter of risk,’’ says Baker, who was a leading voice in pushing the Government to take stricter measures at the beginning of the pandemic.
Baker said the use of face masks and digital tracing could provide a high degree of comfort that the coronavirus wouldn’t be reintroduced to New Zealand.
‘‘When you were looking at whether you resume large scale travel with Australia, the first thing you would look at is, what’s the risk of someone stepping on a plane who’s currently incubating the virus, and it’s approaching zero.
‘‘Then you think: what do you need to do to make a very small risk manageable. You’ve got quarantine, testing, temperature checking, and tracing people’s movements.’’
It would likely require a cap on visitor numbers to begin with, and be carefully monitored before being opened up to the kind of cross-border traffic seen before the pandemic.
‘‘At that point it gets harder because the small risks mount up in proportion to the people. That’s when you have to have systems that can work at a big scale.
‘‘Because it will cost billions of dollars if we lose our elimination status. It’s high stakes. That’s when you start to balance those very small risks.’’
Baker says he’d wear a mask during the flight, even though the risk of sitting next to someone who’s infected – particularly from New Zealand – is exceedingly low.
‘‘I think masks are the key barrier we need to have in place given what we know about this virus.’’
Opening up the borders would give New Zealand a major advantage to attract not only tourists, but industries such as film and education sectors looking for a Covid-free environment.
Australia’s states have had a patchwork approach to virus containment, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said international travel would only resume when interstate borders had fully reopened..
And this week tensions between state premiers over those differing approaches to resuming nationwide travel turned into a public slugfest.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said travel restrictions would be ditched by June 1, and suggested her
Western Australian counterpart Mark MacGowan was keeping borders closed for popularity. In response, MacGowan claimed he was being bullied by NSW.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk this week said her state’s border was likely to remain closed until September.
The Australian infighting may make New Zealand’s appetite to reopen largely academic.
New National Party leader Todd Muller said it was still ‘‘critically important’’ that tourism resumed with Australia as quickly as possible, but we also needed to consider broadening the bubble.
‘‘It’s totally appropriate that Australia is our number one priority, but concurrently we need to be thinking around ‘so how do we open up to China, what does that look like? What
‘Hopefully we can get some money in the bank and survive the winter.’ ROTORUA CANOPY TOURS GENERAL MANAGER PAUL BUTTON
international personnel’’ for a production triggered significant economic benefits and jobs for New Zealanders, who made up on average more than 90 per cent of international production crews varying in size from 200 to 1000.
‘‘Once the projects closed at the time of the Covid-19 shutdown are able to start again, they alone can trigger $350 million in foreign expenditure as well as
thousands of jobs.’’
Director James Cameron, who splits his time between California and his Wairarapa home, told Empire magazine earlier this month that he was hopeful Avatar 2 would still meet its scheduled release of December 2021.
He and his crew were forced to cancel their plans to travel to New Zealand for a scheduled filming block.
‘‘We’re trying to get back to it as quick as we can,’’ he said.
‘‘On the bright side, New Zealand seems to have been very effective in controlling the virus and their goal is not mitigation, but eradication, which they believe they can do with aggressive contact tracing and testing.
‘‘So there’s a very good chance that our shoot might be delayed a couple of months, but we can still do it.’’