Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson has confirmed the Government is "open" to hosting the entire Rugby Championship this year but it will only be considered if the safety of Kiwis can be guaranteed.
SANZAAR announced this morning New Zealand was the "favoured option" for a central location to play out the tournament and they were now "seeking the New Zealand Government's approval" to push ahead with it.
Mr Robertson told media at Invercargill Airport this afternoon they had been discussing with SANZAAR what it would take to pull off the tournament in New Zealand safely with the Covid-19 pandemic still a serious issue globally.
"We're certainly open to the idea but there are quite a few things to work through," Mr Robertson said.
"Our priority has got to be to keep New Zealanders safe and to keep the teams safe and to make sure that we've got the capacity to be able to have teams to come in, isolate, and then obviously be able to play."
"It's a really exciting idea - I think like a lot of New Zealanders, I'd really look forward to it but there's quite a lot of work to do before we can guarantee it."
Mr Robertson said any plans involving the arrival of the teams from Australia, South Africa and Argentina would have to fit in to New Zealand's existing overall border strategy to combat Covid-19.
"We'd have to be increasing our capacity as, obviously, we've got a lot of returning New Zealanders and they are our priority," he said.
"But we are going to work through these issues and we have already been talking to SANZAAR about what might be possible."
Rugby Australia already offered to host the tournament last month in what it saw as a way to recover some of the finances it has lost during the pandemic but the country's troubles with containing the coronavirus recently has left SANZAAR looking across the Tasman Sea.
1 NEWS understands the tournament would be eight weeks long and run from mid-November through December.
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