New Zealand’s ‘travel bubble’ may be with Cook Islands not Australia

Bad news, Australia. New Zealand’s dropped us as its first option for a travel bubble, with PM Jacinda Ardern confirming she’ll prioritise other nations first.

Australia’s hopes of an imminent trans-Tasman travel bubble is slipping away, with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying she will prioritise travel arrangements with other countries before us.

New Zealand looks to be retreating from the travel bubble proposal forged with Australia in May in light of soaring coronavirus case numbers in Melbourne and fresh outbreaks in NSW.

Instead of Australia as a first option, Ms Ardern is now giving first dibs to the COVID-free Cook Islands, which form part of the Realm of New Zealand in the Pacific, along with Tokelau and Niue.

“It’s clear to us that opening up with Realm countries, keeping in mind they are New Zealand passport holders, will come before any opening up with Australia,” Ms Ardern told Newshub.

The Cook Islands has been pushing for a travel bubble with New Zealand, with its Deputy Prime Minister Mark Brown saying earlier this month he’d had “encouraging” discussions with New Zealand authorities on the subject.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she will prioritise travel arrangements with Realm countries in the Pacific ahead of Australia. Picture: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

The Cook Islands, with a population of just over 15,000, is one of the few countries in the world that have reported no COVID-19 cases during the pandemic.

Ms Ardern would not comment on a possible timeline for a travel bridge with the South Pacific nation but said New Zealand airports were already working on the logistics of allowing for the influx of travellers.

“(Officials are) working with the airlines. That’s going to take several weeks. Then we’ll get a report back on exact dates when we’ll be able to start the rollout of the reopening,” she told Newshub.

Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran has backed Ms Ardern, saying the idea of a travel bubble with Australia “felt a little bit closer eight weeks ago”.

“Now it feels that possibly, that maybe, at best, (it could come at) the end of this year, and probably more likely next year,” he told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

The Cook Islands, which has political links with New Zealand, has not recorded a single case of COVID-19. Picture: iStock

Mr Foran also agreed with earlier comments by Ms Ardern that the complicated matter of separating transiting passengers was part of why travel bubbles were taking so long to establish.

“If you’ve got a country that’s effectively COVID-free with another country that’s COVID-free, you’ve got to sort out how you’re going to handle the intermingling, or ideally not the intermingling, of passengers that are transiting through,” he said, according to Newshub.

“That’s something that as a team we’re all going to have to wrestle to the ground, in particular that is going to be important for Australia.”

But New Zealand ACT party leader David Seymour slammed the suggestion, saying separating passengers at airports was “among the most straightforward tasks” and New Zealand’s borders were the “world’s dumbest”.

“Living resiliently in a post-COVID world will require a lot more sophistication than simply saying, ‘It’s too hard, we can’t even separate passengers getting off one plane from passengers on another,’” he said.

Air New Zealand supports Ms Ardern’s position. Picture: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

New Zealanders seem to be looking forward to the prospect of travelling to the Cook Islands, with recent Booking.com data suggesting resorts on the island of Rarotonga were getting more interest than those in Melbourne and Sydney.

But there could still be a glimmer of hope for a trans-Tasman travel bridge between New Zealand and Tasmania, which has just one active case of COVID-19.

New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said he had arranged to speak with Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein.

“I’ve always believed that it was possible between ourselves and Tasmania,” he said, the Canberra Times reported.

“So does Premier Gutwein. His job is to persuade Scott Morrison. And from there, we could go to Queensland.”

The developments across the ditch come as Australia was given a big hint as to when international travel may resume, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg revealing he expected Australia’s borders to reopen on January 1, 2021.

The date was mentioned in yesterday’s federal budget update.

“From 1 January to 30 June 2021, it is assumed that the travel ban is lifted, but that a two-week quarantine period is required of arrivals to Australia,” the Treasury document read.

“This leads to the resumption of arrivals by temporary and permanent migrants, but at lower levels overall than normal.”

But Mr Frydenberg stressed on Thursday that no policy decisions had been made on this basis.

“In terms of the borders, the assumptions are that it very gradually starts to come back, that the quarantine is applied, that you start potentially bringing in some international students,” he said.

“Now that is work that we have been undertaking but of course the environment with respect to the coronavirus is very fluid. So decisions haven’t been taken about start dates for that.”