SpeechRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): I want to thank Mr Brownlee for his comments but he's right; we should be here talking about 2018 to 2019 but we're not because I suppose it's dependent upon the questions anyway. But the reality is that COVID-19 has changed everything so dramatically and 3½ weeks ago when we were considering this—it's almost four weeks ago now—I asked the foreign affairs ministry if they would start doing some work on the concept of an Australasian bubble because I could see that the Australian performance not as clear then against COVID-19 was paralleling ours even though the measurements might have been slightly different.The second thing was knowing amongst a whole host of other facts that 55 percent of our tourist population coming into the country hitherto had been from Australia and the staggering thing was that the second-highest tourism population to Australia was New Zealanders. We could see a chance that if we could start this back as fast as possible we might arrest some of the forecasts of doom and gloom for the tourism industry and as soon as possible. But we also recognise that they are a federal country with a federal system and whilst the Canberra message might be one thing staying on narrative state by state could be different.So I was very encouraged by the Premier of for example Tasmania making a statement about why don't we restore the utility that we had in the 1990s between New Zealand and Hobart and as soon as possible and given that their record is the finest one in Australia for non-COVID cases it was also one enhanced where we can start somewhere anyway and demonstrate to Australia particularly places like Queensland—where we are so important to them in our tourism industry—that this can be done. If we're going to go to regional New Zealand and if we think conceptually that we're one population in terms of our tack on COVID-19 then inter-region is no different than going interstate and if it's interstate why not inter-country? But we've got to think like this is a crisis time and we've got to think of all the utilities to keep people safe but time is of the essence. Every hour is critical now and in that sense we're waiting right now to see—today or tomorrow—what Prime Minister Morrison says. Because it'll be very interesting what decision he comes to and whether the federal system may be delaying a lower level of lockdown in Australia than has been forecast.Having said that the member is right about the Realm countries. If you look at for example Niue and the Cooks if we can secure not just healthy travel in terms of aviation but also be assured of the maritime security at their borders then this looks highly likely and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials have been working on that as they have been working on with respect to Samoa. Now they've been invited also by Fiji's Attorney-General their Minister of Trade to start looking hard at that as well and they are. So I can't say what the outcome is but clearing away the debris of organisation for safety and security is what MFAT is doing. We hope to have an answer; I seriously think we can have an answer in a very short time.Now can I just put it in perspective? The other day when the Warriors got on the plane and went off to Tamworth in Australia was a great sign that the bubble can in a different way work. But when we were moving 130000 people to or from this country in the eye of the storm of COVID we did it without imperilling the health of this country so why can't we get tourism going? The reality of the matter is any failure in this country will not be due to our lack of ability; it will be due to our lack of commitment to see that we get through this and out the other side and get back to normalcy as fast as possible.