Hope of home vanishes
For the thousands of New Zealanders living in Australia, the comforting option of a short flight home now looks like a far horizon.
While about 1000 Kiwi travellers or groups have registered to come home after being stranded across the Tasman by last week’s travel bubble closure, Kiwis residing in Australia are realising the game has changed and even a Christmas visit may be impossible.
The New Zealand Government will review the transTasman travel bubble in late September, but has said it will not reopen the border until Australia’s Covid-19 outbreak is under control.
Australia reported 307 new locally acquired cases, including 291 in New South Wales, yesterday – the most since the outbreak of the contagious Delta variant in June. Both New South Wales and Victoria are in lockdown.
An estimated 600,000 New Zealanders live in Australia.
‘‘We might be geographically very close, but we are a world away,’’ Sydney-based Kiwi lawyer Rob Glass said.
Glass has already missed a trip to New Zealand to be best man at a wedding in July, and worried about not being able to see family back home, including his elderly father in Wellington.
With managed isolation (MIQ) spots booked up for months, it was difficult knowing the doors to home were shut, he said.
‘‘I’ve been trying to get back for a long time.
‘‘Before it was like flying to Victoria, but now it feels impossible.
‘‘It’s a huge concern. It doesn’t feel like the end is in sight’’.
Fellow Kiwi Mark Butterfield is ‘‘desperate’’ to bring his family home for a visit from New South Wales’ central coast to see his parents, siblings and their children.
With wife Ali and young sons Archer and Finley, he booked tickets to fly to Christchurch for Christmas after Covid meant they had to cancel a trip early last year. His grandmother had died in the meantime, and his sons have cousins they have not met.
‘‘Early on we were pretty comfortable with it, but now the uncertainty is starting to tell. The fact that I can’t get a flight to see my family is unsettling.
‘‘I’m getting homesick, which I’ve never really experienced before.’’
Butterfield said that with Australia’s Covid numbers rising, ‘‘we are desperate, but we just cannot see any hope of coming over soon’’. Border records show about 2900 New Zealand citizens and
320 New Zealand residents who travelled to Australia for different reasons while the bubble was open remain there.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told Parliament this week that it was hoped there would be sufficient MIQ spots to get urgent cases home by the end of this month, but many Kiwi travellers stuck in Australia would not meet the urgency criteria.
He said to reopen the travel bubble, the New Zealand Government would need to be ‘‘certain’’ that the Covid outbreak was contained. It would not necessarily need zero cases but wanted to rule out ‘‘unlinked community transmission’’.
About 1000 New Zealanders who travelled to Australia during the travel bubble and cannot get MIQ places to return have registered with the Government to come home.
West Coast couple Irene and Raymond Lee managed to get a flight home on Thursday night after being stranded in Sydney since June. They had two flights cancelled when they tried to return from visiting their son and his family.
Now in MIQ in Auckland, Irene Lee said they were ‘‘over the moon’’ to be home.
Otago University public health professor Michael Baker said it was possible but unlikely that New South Wales could get its outbreak under control in time to reopen the bubble in September.