Coronavirus: Welcome back Kiwis plan for November

New Zealanders and Australians living across the Tasman would be allowed into the country without quarantining under a tourism ‘restart’ plan.

Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham is hopeful travellers from New Zealand will start flying to Australia without having to go into hotel quarantine by the end of the year.

New Zealanders and Australians living across the Tasman would be allowed into the country without quarantining from ­November under a tourism industry “restart” plan, as Jacinda Ardern considers a state-by-state “travel bubble” before Christmas.

The tourism restart task force, which comprises representatives from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Tourism Australia, Flight Centre, Tourist Accommodation Australia and other business leaders, has agreed to a revised timetable to reopen parts of their decimated sector.

Obtained by The Australian, the plan calls for all state border closures to be removed by ­December 1 and people from New Zealand would fly into Australia in November without any ­restrictions. Australians would be able to go to New Zealand without quarantining in a hotel by January or February.

Ms Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister who is facing an election next month, said a trans-Tasman travel bubble could be up and running before the end of the year if Australia’s coronavirus cases continued to decline and a hot spot model was used.

“It is possible,” Ms Ardern told TVNZ. “What we’d need to be assured of is when Australia is saying they have a hot spot (in one state), that the border around that hot spot means that people aren’t able to travel into the states where we are engaging with trans-Tasman travel.”

National cabinet has not yet agreed on a definition of a hot spot, which would be used to restrict the movement of Australians in towns, local council areas or cities where there was a certain number of community transmission cases.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants a hot spot to be declared in metropolitan areas when there is a rolling three-day average of more than 30 locally- acquired cases in three days, or more than nine cases in the ­regions.

The tourism task force said hotel quarantine caps should be entirely removed by March 1 and domestic cruises could begin in November, with expedition cruises for 300 people or less restarting the industry before moving on to bigger ships and taking in New Zealand and the Pacific.

The Victorian border, which has been closed to all states and territories since July, would not reopen until January or February.

ACCI tourism head John Hart said the revised timetable was realistic after Victoria’s second wave of COVID-19 derailed the industry’s initial plan to have the first trans-Tasman travel bubble flights in July.

“The first stage we see as being people able to come from New Zealand. Whether they are New Zealanders or repatriated Australians doesn’t matter. It’s about having a quarantine-free entry into Australia,” Mr Hart said.

“We hope then the response will be New Zealand says ‘we’re happy for it to happen the other way as well’, acknowledging it’s probably going to start with the South Island rather than the North Island given they’ve still got active cases in the north.”

Federal government sources said processes to keep travellers from New Zealand COVID-safe once they landed in Australia were well advanced and there were now discussions with the airlines, ensuring the right planes and routes could be scheduled.

Flights to Sydney are expected first, with Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham hopeful they would start before 2021 then expand to more airports in states with opened borders.

The Northern Territory is also considering expanding its hot spot model, which currently bans residents from Greater Sydney and Victoria, to other countries. “One of the things I’ve been discussing is, with our international borders, is there a capacity to expand our hot spots policy?” NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner told ABC radio.