The Government won’t be reopening the trans-Tasman bubble until it is “comfortable” community transmission in Australia is contained, the Deputy Prime Minister says.
The bubble was suspended on Friday night for at least eight weeks as New South Wales and other parts of Australia grapple with the Delta variant.
Grant Robertson told Q+A the Government’s “precautionary approach” to the bubble had changed from a state by state basis to one that was Australia wide due to Delta’s higher transmissability.
“The reality, particularly on the mainland of Australia, is that unfortunately those are big borders, it’s very hard, and because it’s so transmissible, we’ve seen with Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, even Western Australia and Northern Territory briefly, once it gets in there it is difficult to contain.”
He explained the variant had fundamentally changed the world’s approach to Covid-19.
“Certainly when it came to the trans-Tasman travel bubble when we looked at the situation and said, ‘how do we manage where we’ve got NSW with this outbreak’, and the reality is we needed to take a step back and say the whole of Australia is now potentially at risk of the Delta variant spreading, it is so much more transmissible,” he said.
“We therefore had to act.”
He said the Government needed to see community transmission contained in Australia and wanted to be “comfortable” this was the case before any decision on reopening the bubble was made.
“We need to be confident it is contained and under control and obviously eight weeks gives us a window where we feel we can at least have another look at it.”
Robertson said the Government would continue with its precautionary approach due to the risks to New Zealand, he said.
“We will continue with that precautionary approach because the worst thing for New Zealand would be ourselves having to go into a lockdown type situation and all the impacts that brings.”
