Hipkins ChrisMINISTERIAL STATEMENTSCOVID-19—Australian Travel Bubble PauseHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you Mr Speaker. I wish to make a ministerial statement relating to the New Zealand Government's decision to suspend quarantine-free travel with Australia.On 22 July Cabinet met and agreed that the quarantine-free travel from all Australian states and territories would be suspended based on the Director-General of Health's concern around increased transmissibility of the Delta variant and continued movement of positive cases in the community in New South Wales. Quarantine-free travel with Australia commenced on 19 April on the basis that travellers from both countries did not have or were very unlikely to have COVID-19 spreading through communities.The New Zealand Government adopted a flexible approach of continue and pause with each individual state to give them time to get any COVID-19 infection in their community under control as part of our elimination strategy approach at our border. When we set up the traffic light system for COVID-19 it was based on what we knew at the time about variants that were present and how it was moving through the countries and communities.In the middle of June the first case of the Bondi cluster was reported in New South Wales. By the middle of July not only had New Zealand paused quarantine-free travel with New South Wales but also with Victoria and then South Australia due to the risks of COVID-19 in those communities. The Delta variant has materially changed the risk profile of COVID-19. We've seen that contact tracing alone is unable to get ahead of this variant and that restrictions are absolutely necessary to stamp it out where it emerges.In the view of our health officials there is now a greater risk from the Delta variant than there was when we opened quarantine-free travel with Australia. It's the New Zealand Government's duty to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. We continue to believe that the strongest health response is also the strongest economic response. So we made the decision to suspend quarantine-free travel with a grace period of a week for New Zealand citizens and those ordinarily resident in New Zealand to return from Australia with the bubble officially closed for green flights from 11.59 p.m. New Zealand time on Friday 30 July.Just as we have our alert level settings for managing cases in New Zealand we also have a framework for managing cases in Australia through the continue pause and suspend system. Extra flights have been put on where required—for example from Brisbane and from Melbourne—and extra capacity was opened up on flights from Perth as people cancelled their existing bookings. Managed return flights will continue as planned from New South Wales with travellers from that state required to spend 14 days in managed isolation in New Zealand.More than 1500 rooms in managed isolation have been made available for the first two phases of managed return from New South Wales and they have accommodated an estimated 2100 people including more than 300 urgent and exceptional cases. Last week the Government confirmed that an additional 500 rooms will be allocated from contingency between 9 and 22 August for those returning from New South Wales. The registration of interest process has been established for these rooms using a form on the Unite against COVID-19 travel website which is being used to prioritise those bookings.We remain committed to the trans-Tasman bubble but it is paramount that it operates in a safe manner. Since we set up quarantine-free travel with Australia back in April more than 200000 people have flown between our two countries. In the lead-up to reviewing the suspension with Australia Ministers will need to be certain that the outbreak with New South Wales and within wider Australia is contained that any remaining cases are generally linked and that we don't see a large number of cases in the community.Our team of 5 million here in New Zealand has worked hard to put us in a strong position both health-wise and economically and we do not want to put these hard-won gains at risk. We'll continue to adapt improve and learn in the Government's response to COVID-19 as we need to to meet the challenges presented by new variants and to keep New Zealand safe. Globally we're seeing the consequences of not doing that.