An Auckland business leader says the two-way travel bubble between the Cook Islands and New Zealand needs to be in place faster, saying the New Zealand Government is taking too cautious an approach to setting it up.
Auckland Business Chamber CEO Michael Barnett told TVNZ1’s Breakfast the Government’s cautious approach is causing hardship for businesses in both countries.
“I’m not saying throw caution to the wind and then call that courage, I promise you,” Barnett said.
“But, I think that we’ve had enough experience over the last six months. I look back to March and it seems to me that we’re still using the March standard in the way that we make decisions for today.”
It comes as the New Zealand Government announced on Saturday it would have a two-way quarantine-free travel bubble with the Cook Islands by March next year.
The Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown said on Saturday he expected a date would be confirmed next week for the initial phase allowing one-way quarantine free travel to Auckland.
Barnett said businesses deserved certainty about when exactly by March the bubble would be in place.
“They’ve [businesses] got no certainty. They’ve just been given caution, caution, caution. To me, that’s not good enough.”
People from the Cook Islands also need to be able to travel for medical care in New Zealand without having to put themselves at risk in quarantine facilities, he said.
“I’m saying please, can we do this earlier rather than later,” he said.
“We have made a name for this country in the way we’re contained and the way that we’ve isolated. Now make a name for yourself in the way that you open and the way that you get the processes right.”
Meanwhile, Cook Islands Chamber of Commerce’s Fletcher Melvin is calling for certainty about the date of the bubble.
He said the assurance would give businesses struggling because of a lack of tourism the ability to plan when they want to bring in more staff.
“For goodness sakes, just give us a firm date so we can get on with our lives,” Melvin said.
“It’s tough for people paying off their business loans … we need tourism to start operating.”
For those in the Cook Islands who weren’t able to travel to New Zealand for medical treatment, he said they continued to “suffer”.
Public health expert Michael Baker said opening a travel bubble with the Cook Islands was reasonable, given the islands had never had a Covid-19 case.
The epidemiologist says Aotearoa needs to move from a "one-size-fits-all approach" at the border to more risk-based. (Source: Other)
“We’re still sticking with this one size fits all approach at the border, whereas I think we can move to a risk-based approach.”
Baker called for a traffic light system. That system would categorise most of the Pacific as “green” because it had eliminated Covid-19, and allow quarantine-free travel from the region, he said.
But, he warned that New Zealand was entering a “really dangerous time”, with Covid-19 cases continuing to spread rapidly in places like the US and Europe.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed there would be an announcement some time this week which would give more details about dates of the Cook Islands travel bubble.
She said the Cook Islands had made a specific request to allow those who needed medical treatment to be able to come to New Zealand without having to quarantine. These people would still quarantine when they return to the Cook Islands.
“We can see no public health reason why we won't be able to do that,” she said of the one-way travel from the Cook Islands to New Zealand for this group of people.
Ardern said the delay on a two-way travel bubble was because contingency plans still needed to be formed in case New Zealand transported a Covid-19 case to the Cook Islands.
She said contact tracing systems that would be able to identify the person to then be sent back to New Zealand needed to be put in place first.
A date for the two-way bubble wouldn’t be confirmed until both countries were confident, she said.
SHARE ME