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Two Australian states outside of the current travel bubble have expressed concern after 80 New Zealanders flew out of New South Wales and the Northern Territory.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says he has been told that 55 New Zealand passengers entered the state without having to self-quarantine.
Australia’s acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said the department knew that 17 New Zealanders were trying to enter Melbourne on Friday.
But at a press conference today, Andrews said the latest Australian federal government list revealed that 55 New Zealanders had traveled to the city.
He said they had found 23 of those people at 16 addresses, after receiving the list 12 hours after their arrival.
The prime minister said the authorized officers were now based at Melbourne airport.
“I don’t control borders, and I don’t control what happens at Sydney Airport and I don’t think anyone can reasonably expect me to. I’m not looking for a dispute about this, I just want it to be settled.”
Tudge said the Victorian government was “represented” by Victoria’s health director Brett Sutton at a meeting discussing what should happen if New Zealanders flew from Sydney or Darwin (as part of the transtasman bubble) to another Australian state.
“We further understand from today’s Age newspaper that the prime minister’s own department had given authorization to people who had come from New Zealand to Sydney to then travel to Victoria,” Tudge told reporters.
“So the Victorian Government was present when the issue was discussed, they were informed that this was going to happen, they raised no objections at the meetings and also expressly authorized people arriving in Sydney from New Zealand to travel in Victoria.” .
Tudge asked Andrews to “reveal” the emails that “show, clearly and demonstrably, that they authorized people to enter Victoria”, which would “completely clarify this.”
Yesterday, Andrews said he was “very disappointed” that 17 travelers from New Zealand were able to enter Victoria, despite the state not participating in the travel bubble that began on Friday.
The passengers, who flew to Sydney, did not need to enter hotel quarantine under the new transtasman travel bubble arrangements.
Under the agreement between the two nations, New Zealanders can travel without quarantine to both New South Wales and the Northern Territory, on the condition that they have not been to a Covid-19 hotspot in the 14 days prior to their trip. .
Andrews said he had written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison about it.
He said his office was still unable to obtain Australian Border Force travel cards as to “who are these people and where have they gone”.
“We are still waiting for the Australian Border Force to provide us with the passenger cards for each of those 17 people,” he said.
“We will visit each of those people and make sure they are fully up to date, so to speak, when it comes to the rules, regulations, structures that we have in Victoria.
“I can’t tell you if they are citizens of New Zealand or Australia. I know where they came from and how they got here. I don’t know how they got here in the political sense.”
“We are disappointed that this happened as I had written to the Prime Minister on this very issue the day before, saying that at some point we will join the New Zealand / Australia travel bubble, but it is not appropriate now.”
“We don’t want anything at all to undermine the incredible work that Victorians have done and are doing. Some things have gone wrong here. We are very much at the end of it, not necessarily part of it. We made it clear that we did not want to be a part, no we could be part of the bubble fix right now. “
Andrews said it is “not fair” when Victorians cannot move freely through their own state for people to come from another country, “without us knowing.”
Meanwhile, 9 News reports that 25 New Zealanders flew to Perth in Western Australia.
All 25 are now in quarantine, with one child in an arrangement with a family member.
Prime Minister Mark McGrath criticized the federal government and those of New South Wales and the Northern Territory for allowing it to happen.
“We would prefer better management of these arrangements, but this is something that happened that was out of our control,” the prime minister said at his daily press conference.
