Trans-Tasman bubble hoped to be open
A high-powered group investigating opening up trans-Tasman travel amid the coronavirus pandemic hopes to put its proposal to politicians by next month, and get people travelling by the July school holidays.
New Zealanders currently cannot travel outside the country under alert level 2, but both New Zealand and Australia’s success in limiting the spread of Covid-19 has enabled discussion about possible trans-Tasman travel without a quarantine.
New Zealand’s tourism industry benefits greatly from Australian visitors, with some struggling operators saying a transTasman bubble would be a lifeline for them The ‘‘Trans-Tasman Safe Border Group’’ is made up of 11 government agencies, six airports, two airlines, and includes health experts and airline, airport and border agency representatives from both Australia and New Zealand.
Started by Auckland Airport, and co-ordinated by the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, the team of 40 experts from both sides of the Tasman have been working together for the past two weeks to develop recommendations for the reopening of borders between Australia and New Zealand.
‘‘It was the 19th of March that our borders got locked down, and it was the 20th of March that [forum co-chairperson] Ann [Sherry] and I were on the text machine just chatting to one another about how do we think about making Australian and New Zealand a place where we could think about reopening in the future when it was safe to do so,’’ Auckland Airport chief executive Adrian Littlewood said. ‘‘It was only a few days later we started actually talking about this idea.’’
There had been an ‘‘avalanche of interest, both domestically, trans-Tasman but also internationally around this as a beacon of hope about getting back to normal,’’ Littlewood said.
‘‘The Tasman is almost the pilot to test and learn from our point of view, how this can work and therefore what do we need we do.’’
The idea of a health passport had come up many times, and it depended on the speed and accuracy of testing, Littlewood said.
There had to be compliance and confidence in the whole journey of the traveller, from their