Travel bubble with Australia 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.

In his last press conference of the year after the Cabinet, Ardern said that the Cabinet had agreed that the bubble will open in the first quarter of 2021, which would mean that travelers do not have to quarantine themselves at either end.

The date will be announced next year after more arrangements have been made.

Australia’s cabinet needed to close the bubble and depended on the Covid-19 situation in both countries not changing.

Segregation of staff, ensuring there are contingency plans for an outbreak in Australia, remains part of the logistical problems to be solved, Ardern said.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins will visit Auckland Airport tomorrow to see how they plan to organize traveler segregation.

One of the options on the table for bringing New Zealanders back from Australia if there was an outbreak is for returning travelers to isolate themselves when they return home depending on this.

Airlines that grounded the fleet and licensed staff had indicated they would need a notice period before the trans-Tasman bubble was operational, Hipkins said.

Meanwhile, the government’s Covid-19 resurgence plan will be released tomorrow.

‘The year of the team’

Ardern reflected on the first post-Cabinet press conference 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.

“I am incredibly proud of what our five million dollar team has accomplished.

“This is the year of the team.”

He also thanked essential workers and frontline border workers for their work.

Hipkins reminded New Zealanders to maintain good hygiene and keep scanning QR codes while traveling the country this summer.

“I think New Zealanders desperately want a break,” Ardern said.

When asked to describe 2020 in two words, he answered one: “Horrendous.”

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 the 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.

Ardern also declined to say whether a deal was brought to the cabinet today.

Ardern said that he had been seeking Kīngitanga’s advice on when to potentially visit Ihumatao.

Trevor mallard

Spokesman Trevor Mallard will appear before a select committee this week.

Last week he publicly apologized for the comments he made in which he erroneously claimed that an accused rapist was working on the premises of Parliament.

A staff member was removed and later sued for defamation, which was later revealed to have cost the taxpayer more than $ 330,000.

Ardern said President Trevor Mallard should stay in office because even though he made a mistake, he was still the best person for the job.

“He made a mistake, there is no question,” Ardern said this afternoon.

She said it was not up to Mallard to apologize to her because he serves on behalf of the entire Parliament.

It was his responsibility to answer to Parliament, which he did when he appeared before the select committee.

Ardern said the decision to expand legal costs for MPs was made by the Business Select Committee in August and was separated from the Spokesman’s provisions.

Greta Thunberg’s comments

When asked about Greta Thunberg’s tweet, Ardern said she hadn’t seen it.

In early December, Parliament officially declared a climate emergency in New Zealand, a move Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called “recognition of the next generation.”

It was a “science-based statement,” Ardern told MPs on December 2.

But the response upset environmental activist Thunberg, and the 17-year-old commented in an opinion piece that he described the statement as a mark of virtue with little substance.

She tweeted a line from the Newsroom commentary article, which read: “In other words, the government just committed to reducing less than 1 percent of the country’s emissions by 2025.”

He then added his own response, saying that New Zealand’s lack of response “is not unique to any one nation.”

“Text explaining New Zealand’s so-called climate emergency declaration. Of course, this is nothing unique to any one nation. # FightFor1Point5.”