1. Question No. 1—Prime MinisterHon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime MinisterORAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Prime Minister1. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government's policies and actions?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular I stand by my decision to create a strong and stable Government with a cooperation agreement with the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealanders voted for stability and certainty at the election and that is what this Government provides. As a Government we're continuing to support New Zealanders including through our recent announcements including for instance to provide school lunches to an additional 88000 students in 322 schools and kura and also to guarantee that every New Zealander will have free access to the Pfizer vaccine; that we'll support businesses through the Resurgence Support Payment; that we'll provide free period poverty products to all primary intermediate secondary school and kura students; that we will bring in Matariki and celebrate it from 24 June next year as New Zealand's newest public holiday; that we will conclude our deployment of New Zealand Defence Force staff in Afghanistan by May 2021; and that we'll put in further efforts to protect Māui and Hector's dolphins—just a snapshot of some of the announcements as a Government we've made in recent times.Hon Judith Collins: Oh! So does she stand by the commitment she made 10 months ago that New Zealand would have a travel bubble with Australia as soon as it was safe to do so?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.Hon Judith Collins: Why after 10 months has she failed to deliver a travel bubble with Australia when her tourism Minister has admitted things are really dire" for areas like the West Coast of the South Island?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because we haven't considered it safe to do so.Hon Judith Collins: Will she deliver on her most recent plan re-announced in December last year to open a trans-Tasman bubble by the end of March this year?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will be aware that since we talked about that we've had for instance the Holiday Inn cluster in Melbourne which unfortunately caused them to be in a five-day lockdown. There was the Mercure Hotel quarantine cluster in Brisbane in March. We've had the Grand Hyatt hotel on 3 February and a number of other cases over in Australia; likewise we've dealt with our own situation. I think it's fair to say that we have from the beginning worked on the premise that we would have a whole-of-country approach where we had joint decision-making around the opening of a bubble. Since then what we've seen is a different approach taken by Australia; that leaves open for us the ability to take a different approach. What it will do is create a bit of an uncertain environment where travellers may indeed be stranded in either country if there is an outbreak. We want to make sure that as we work up what an open bubble would look like in that arrangement we have plans around how to deal with those scenarios.David Seymour: What is stopping the Government of New Zealand from simply opening the border to travellers from Australian states that have had no active cases for 28 days mirroring the way Australia treats its border in relation to us?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Something very simple: that we can't guarantee that those states that have been COVID-free operate a completely closed border—in fact they don't. So we've talked about this before as being one of the challenges. If we were dealing with states that had entirely closed borders and were free of COVID it would be a no-brainer but we have flow between those states. Western Australia for instance is probably a good example which would be most like New Zealand in the way they operate but other states where we have a high frequency of travellers they don't. So it does add complication for New Zealand that does not exist for Australia.Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that some of those states who have the longest periods of time that are COVID-19 - free are not providing quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders arriving in Australia?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.Hon Judith Collins: What criteria is her Government using to determine if a travel bubble is safe?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We set out that criteria some time ago. Of course what's primarily important for us is whether or not there is a community outbreak or not and so on that basis actually a number of the states where we would have high-frequency travel have just come out of periods where they've been dealing with community transmission in the same way that we have just come out of a scenario. You can see that the way that we'd originally intended to work has changed for both Australia—and therefore we'll need to adjust on our side as well. Where they are opening up but attaching different criteria like for instance pre-departure testing it's obviously free for us to consider or not whether that's a way we'd choose to operate instead as well.Hon Judith Collins: Why is someone arriving from Canberra—which hasn't had a COVID case for eight months—required to spend two weeks in isolation denying another Kiwi or essential worker a managed isolation and quarantine spot?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Look all the way through this I have at various points had the Opposition tell us that we needed to open up our borders. At every point there will have been an example of that and ultimately that is utterly the imperative of the Opposition. Our job is to make sure that when we make a decision that we have a good health basis for it that we can make sure that we give as much certainty to travellers as we can that we have a plan in place for if there is an outbreak including for what happens to stranded travellers and that we don't do something we then try and reverse. We can't unscramble the egg—once we open this we need to be able to stick to it in some form.Hon Judith Collins: Is she then saying that the Australian Government is wrong to have unilaterally opened its border to New Zealand travellers?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It's wrong to say they unilaterally have opened their borders. On most occasions different states have taken different approaches. That has been a complicating factor but it's not insurmountable. Chris Bishop: The Federal Government have opened it.Hon Judith Collins: Well why are people returning—Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Queensland opened at a different time—SPEAKER: Order! Order! Both of you stop it please.Hon Judith Collins: Why are people returning from Australia taking up 40 percent of our scarce managed isolation spaces when Australia has now gone longer without a community case than the entire country of New Zealand?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The reason they closed to us was because we had an outbreak and equally we would want to be able to maintain the right to close to them when they have an outbreak—as they did over Christmas; as they did in March."