Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I think the biggest lesson from that contribution is if you're going to ask for an urgent debate it helps to have something to say when the urgent debate request is accepted. If I was being uncharitable I could remind Judith Collins of all of the things she said during the election campaign about New Zealand's border—about wanting to charge everybody coming into the country and talking about the fact that people had had plenty of time to come in prior and therefore we should make it as difficult as possible for people to come back into the country—but of course I'm much more charitable than that.Today is a good day for New Zealanders as we look forward to the opening up of free travel between New Zealand and Australia from 19 April—something that we can all look forward to something that those families that have been separated by our border restrictions will be looking forward to and something that our tourism industry will be looking forward to as well as they look forward to welcoming back Australians to New Zealand. To put this into context before COVID-19 in a typical year Australians were making up about 40 percent of the arrivals into New Zealand. They brought with them about $2.7 billion in revenue to New Zealand a lot of that going into our tourism and hospitality sector and we look forward to welcoming them and their money back into New Zealand in a couple of weeks' time. It will be good for New Zealand and it will be good for our businesses.The Government has taken a cautious approach when it comes to opening up the trans-Tasman bubble. What we didn't want to see is the border opening and closing willy-nilly without New Zealanders knowing where they would stand in the event of events happening on either side of the Tasman. We made it clear from the beginning that our preference was for a joint decision-making framework. That was what the Australians indicated they wanted initially. Then they moved on to one where they indicated that they would prefer to keep a unilateral decision-making framework where each country made its own decisions about whether the green zone would open or close depending on how they wanted to respond to events on either side of the Tasman. We adapted to that approach.We will still be keeping in regular communication at a Government-to-Government level at a health system to health system level to make sure we are sharing the information so that we can continue to keep the green zone open as much as we possibly can that any ceasing of those green flights is only done if we absolutely need to do that and that people understand the reasons for any pause in trans-Tasman travel that may occur—why we're doing it how long we think it might last for—so that people know what to expect and they can plan for that as they consider whether or not they want to travel across the Tasman.We have been working closely with the airlines with the airports to make sure that trans-Tasman travel is safe. To put that into context at Auckland Airport one of the things that we wanted to see was a physical separation between those coming from known non - green zone countries—so in this case Australia—and other countries where they could potentially be bringing COVID-19 with them. Auckland Airport created a plan that allows them to separate those passengers completely. There are still some issues they're working through around how they would handle red zone passengers to make sure that they're not standing around and potentially spreading COVID-19 amongst themselves. They're still working through that with health officials to provide the reassurance that we are looking for. And we're confident that the infection prevention and control audits that will be happening this week will give us the information the certainty that we're looking for to be able to sign off on that and the health teams are working on that at the moment.In terms of the green zone travel that will actually be the bulk of the Auckland international airport. In Wellington it will be the only part of the international terminal. They won't be accepting any red zone flights. And in Christchurch work is being done again to separate out red zone and green zone travel. Queenstown will only be accepting green zone flights from international destinations—so in other words only from Australia at this point. That gives people confidence that one of the key transmission points in international travel at the moment—being in transit in the airports—won't be a risk for green zone travellers coming into New Zealand. In terms of the airlines we've worked with them to ensure that they are using crews that are separate. There are separate crews flying on the green zone flights to those flying on the red zone flights. There is a process in place to ensure that planes that are flying both green and red zone flights are sanitised thoroughly between flights again to reduce any risk of unwanted COVID-19 transmission. It's been important that we make sure that all of those arrangements are in place. We have released the response framework. It sets out how we would respond to a case whether it was in New Zealand or Australia whether we would continue in the sorts of cases that would see us continuing with green zone travel or whether we would pause for a period—and when I say a pause we're talking about maybe up to 72 hours while we gather more information—or whether we would suspend. We would be looking to suspend in the case of widespread community transmission on either side of the Tasman. So we've set out the framework that gives people an idea of what they can expect. But flyer beware" needs to be one of their watchwords here. They won't be able to get travel insurance for some of the potential scenarios that people will face when they're crossing the Tasman and we wanted to be clear with them about what to expect.In terms of the implications of trans-Tasman travel for New Zealand and for managed isolation we are working our way through that. We have been separating higher-risk and lower-risk passengers in many instances so we do have some managed isolation facilities that we have only been using for trans-Tasman travellers and those coming from the Pacific. They are less suitable for receiving passengers where the risk profile is higher and where there are likely to be higher concentrations of passengers coming in with COVID-19. So we're working our way through that. That's one of the implications of the trans-Tasman travel zone that we're working our way through.We do also have to consider the Pacific in these conversations. We're in discussions with the Cook Islands about a safe travel zone between New Zealand and the Cook Islands and one of the things that they are discussing with us is what our arrangements are with Australia so that they understand what the movement of Australians through New Zealand to the Cook Islands might be. That is one of the things that they want to understand at this point and early indications are that they would expect anyone coming from Australia to remain in New Zealand for 14 days before being able to travel to the Cook Islands. So that is one of the things that we're working through with them.When it comes to extending the safe zone to other countries including places like Samoa and Tonga the key message here is that they have to want that too. We can't unilaterally make that decision. It has to be a two-way decision. At the moment some of those countries are not letting their own citizens return so when we're talking about Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) workers for example—and in another contribution that Judith Collins made she was saying we should have more and more RSE workers coming into New Zealand. One of the impediments to that is that some of those countries aren't allowing their RSE workers back into their home countries at the end of their time as RSE workers. So we have to work through that very carefully otherwise those RSE workers end up being stranded in New Zealand because some of those countries simply are not accepting people in their country. That is their choice. As Judith Collins says we should respect the sovereignty of those other countries. We won't impose our will upon them. We have to work with the rules that they are setting for who they will accept and who they won't.One of the comments from the National Party has been about why we didn't move faster on the trans-Tasman bubble. Let's bear in mind that the National Party the week before the big Melbourne outbreak was saying that we should have been allowing people free travel between New Zealand and Australia at that point. Had we been doing that New Zealand probably would've ended up with an alert level escalation which we were able to avoid by being cautious and by being careful. Of course they wanted to open up to just about everybody at that point including China—something that they don't seem to be talking about any more.Our caution—making sure that we're doing this well doing it thoroughly and doing it safely—is one of the reasons that New Zealand as a country has had some of the fewest restrictions of any country in the world over the last year. We've been cautious for a reason—because we have been freer than everybody else and we have been freer than everybody else because of that caution. Our Government has not been willing to put that at risk.So as we've been debating the trans-Tasman bubble we have been making sure that we have been taking care of the details. We've been making sure that we have everything ready so that when this starts we can continue it. We have been making sure that people will be certain about what they can expect when they're travelling across the Ditch. Either way we will be welcoming Australians to New Zealand. Australia will be welcoming New Zealanders there. This is good for both of our countries."