Kiwis in Perth are hoping the city's first lockdown will not harm hopes of a trans-Tasman travel bubble in the next couple of months.
Yesterday, Australia reopened its border one way to New Zealand following reports of community spread in New Zealand last week, but Perth remains in lockdown for the first time after a community outbreak.
The five-day lockdown - announced yesterday after a security guard at a Perth CBD hotel tested positive for what's believed to the more contagious UK variant of Covid-19 - was a shock to Kiwi Debbie Childs.
“It felt like there really wasn't Covid. People were carrying on as normal, there was no social distancing or physical distancing really anymore here. We've now all got to have masks - today's the first day,” she said.
Childs said the most difficult part of last year was not returning home to see her family.
“We've got used to the feeling of having the border closed every time that there is a new infection or there is a lockdown. You just wonder how long this is going to go on for.”
However, a member of the trans-Tasman Safe Border Group is optimistic the outbreak will not impact the elusive bubble.
“There's more trust developing about each other's contact tracing systems and so on, and that's probably one of the pre-cursors,” Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum co-chair Ann Sherry said.
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins said the Australian and New Zealand governments were aware they would have to prepare for the possibility of “small outbreaks on either side of the tasman” following the establishment of the travel bubble.
“We need to be aware, we need to have agreed protocol,” he said.
Sherry said the bubble goal is not just for economic reasons, but emotional ones, too.
“We've got a lot of people who are really struggling with the disconnection between family,” she said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in December that the bubble could occur as early as the first quarter of 2021, which Sherry said would require agreements on both sides over vaccination strategies and “a contingency of what happens, what are our processes if we get an outbreak somewhere”.
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