Watch Live: Oz Travel Bubble Could Be Early Next Year – PM

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says government ministers have in principle agreed to a travel bubble with Australia early next year, depending on the decisions of Australian ministers.

At his last press conference of the year after Cabinet, Ardern said the date would be announced next year after further arrangements had been made.

Ardern reflected on the first post-Cabinet this year when they first discussed Covid-19 and soon arranged a repatriation flight from Wuhan.

New Zealand has the lowest death rate and the lowest number of active cases in the OECD and New Zealanders should be proud, Ardern said.

“None of that is to say that our response has been perfect, it hasn’t been.”

Ardern said he wanted to thank New Zealanders again for their efforts this year.

“This is the year of the team.”

He also thanked Essential Workers and Frontline Frontiers for their work.

This morning, Ardern said there are still a “series of problems” to be solved with the transtasman bubble and that he would give more details at the 2 pm conference.

She told TVNZ’s Breakfast that one of the considerations to be resolved was the possibility that if there were a Covid-19 outbreak in Australia and New Zealand closed their borders, there would still be a possibility of bringing the kiwis back.

“We have to make decisions about how we will potentially quarantine thousands of returning people who would then have to return,” Ardern said.

“We would need to know how we are dealing with internal borders with Australia and we would also have to have the airlines ready. We are very interested in seeing segregated airline staff for non-quarantine travel.”

Ardern said the problems “were not insurmountable.”

Queensland is the last Australian state to allow New Zealanders to travel there without quarantine, along with Victoria.

Ardern announced last week that she and her Cook Islands counterpart Mark Brown had instructed officials to continue to work together to implement all necessary measures to safely restart non-quarantined roundtrip travel in the first quarter of next year.

Cold weather

It has also been reported that an initial agreement on the confrontation over Ihumātao will reach the cabinet today, but Ardern has said there would be no announcement today.

RNZ reported that it understood that the deal was for Fletcher Building to sell the land to the Government, the first step in reaching a resolution; with the agreement of Fletchers and Kīngitanga, on behalf of mana whenua.

But Ardern said there would be an announcement this afternoon at the “appropriate time” and declined to put a timetable on it.