Ministerial Statements — COVID-19—Australian Travel Bubble Pause

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 1,500 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 2,100 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 200,000 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.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for COVID-19 Response for the statement and the update. It goes without saying that we in the National Party extend our sympathies to New South Wales on the outbreak of Delta in that state—I note another 199 cases today. Also, we note that we are supportive in the National Party of the trans-Tasman bubble generally, obviously. We supported its opening, and we hope that we can return to a situation where there is some quarantine-free travel, but we understand the need for the closure in the circumstances.

I have a few questions for the Minister about what he’s just said. New South Wales is obviously the area of the greatest concern, with quarantine-free travel closed since June. Does the Minister have a number of how many New Zealanders are currently stuck, for want of a better word, in New South Wales and are looking to return?

I do have an idea of the first part of the question but perhaps not so much the second part of the question, which is the number of people who have left New Zealand and gone to New South Wales and have not come back to New Zealand. That sits at around 4,623. In terms of a breakdown of that, about 2,900 of those are New Zealand citizens, about 320 New Zealand residents, about 460 Australian citizens, and about 923 are temporary visa holders. So that doesn’t necessarily give us an indication of whether they’ve gone one way and intend to come back, but it gives us a bit of an idea of who’s there who was here when the bubble first opened.

Just in relation to the registration of interest process for rooms in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), does the Minister have a number as to how many people have registered through that process so far and how many the Government expect to register?

The registration of interest process itself, I think, has closed in the last few minutes; I think it was closing mid-afternoon or early afternoon today. I know that there had been, I think, from memory, just over a thousand registrations of interest. Some of those have already been filtered out as being not eligible. It’s important to remember, though, that registrations of interest can cover more than one person but then one room can cover more than one person as well; so the correlation between rooms available and registrations of interest is an interesting one. So we do what we can to make sure that we’re accommodating as many people as possible. We’ve accommodated more people than we’ve had rooms available, because, if you get a family, they only require one room, for example.

Will the announcement of the extra 500 rooms from the contingency get everyone back in the next few weeks who wants to come home, or are there going to be people, potentially, who can’t come back?

I’m optimistic that by the end of August, we can get New Zealanders back who meet the criteria to get those urgent allocations. There will be some who want to come back who won’t meet that criteria for urgent allocations, and so we’ll keep providing extra rooms, but the first priority at this point is to get those people back who have an urgent need to get back.

Just in relation to the 500 extra contingency rooms, what will happen once they have, essentially, been exhausted on the New South Wales managed return flights? Is the Government intending to put those back into the general stock of managed isolation and quarantine rooms or could they potentially be put to bringing other classes of people back such as—well, bringing the split migrant families to New Zealand, for example?

We haven’t made any final decisions about that. Part of that decision will depend on how long it’s likely to be before the trans-Tasman bubble can re-open again; so we’ve set an initial eight-week period for the suspension. If it looks like we’re nearing the point where the trans-Tasman bubble is going to re-open, we will want to still keep a contingency for trans-Tasman. If it looks like there’s going to be a period where we can free up those rooms and not have to have them in contingency, then we would look at what the demand profile for MIQ was at the time. We do know that there’s a lot more demand for MIQ now from people who are currently eligible than there are rooms available, so that would certainly be one of the things that we would think about.

Just a couple of final questions in relation to the threshold for re-opening the bubble. I note the Minister said Ministers will need to be certain the outbreak in New South Wales and wider Australia is contained and also that remaining cases have to be generally linked. What does that mean in reality? Is the threshold for the reopening of the bubble zero cases across the whole of Australia, for example? Or, if it’s not zero, what is a low number of cases? And will the Government approach it on a New Zealand to Australia level—i.e., viewing Australia as a whole entity? Or will it take a state by state approach; reopening, for example, to Queensland—to take Queensland, for example—if they get down to very few cases, even while New South Wales may have a few more?

I think, in answer to the last part of the question, generally we’ve found state by state arrangements can work quite well. One of the concerns that we have around the situation within New South Wales at the moment is it is clear that that is leaking into other states. So one of the things that we would want to see is that if we were going to re-open on a state by state basis, there was a good, clear demarcation between states, where we weren’t concerned that people could travel into those states and thereby travel to New Zealand from those states. So that is something that we would look for.

It doesn’t necessarily mean absolutely no cases in the community or no new cases, but it does mean that we’d be looking to make sure that they don’t have unlinked community transmission, which is what they’re dealing with at the moment. They’re getting cases popping up where they don’t know how that person got it. Once they get back to a point where it’s more predictable, which, through contact tracing, it is possible to get to that point—once you get down to a low number of cases, it’s possible that new cases pop up, but you knew who they were, they were in isolation already, and therefore the risk is low. We’d certainly be wanting to get to at least that point before we’d consider opening up again.

And, just finally, when is the Government planning on reviewing the settings with Australia; and how often after that point if the first available opportunity looks like it probably won’t be reopened?

We’ve said, with this suspension, that we’ve set it for eight weeks. We’ll keep it under review during that time, but I think, given what we’re seeing in Australia—particularly in New South Wales—and given what we know from our own experience about how long it takes to turn that curve back down again, I think that eight-week initial benchmark was quite a realistic one. If things aren’t under control in Australia—or aren’t going to get under control in Australia, particularly in New South Wales—before that eight-week period is out, I think we would probably see signs of that with a reasonable period of time before the eight weeks marker comes up; so we’d be able to foreshadow that at the time.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. We reiterate thanks to the Minister. The Green Party are very supportive of the suspension and of the approach that the Government has taken. It’s really a clear reminder as cases are increasing worldwide, including in countries that have more extensive vaccination, that this pandemic is far from over and that the Delta variant and other new variants are a serious threat not only to non-vaccinated populations but even people who have received the vaccination. Of course, we’re aware that this will be a blow to friends and family who want to maintain connections with their whānau in Australia, but it’s really in the best interests of both countries that there is certainty while there is this community spread. Even prior to this outbreak, there were a number of cancelled travel arrangements and people stuck in lockdowns in various states and cities, and so I think that having this certainty of at least eight weeks’ suspension is really a good thing for businesses and family.

I just have one additional question about managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). It’s a broader issue. It’s related to the difficulties that people are having registering spots in MIQ, be they coming from Australia or other countries, and if the Government is looking at changes or improvements to the MIQ booking system so it can’t be gamed by bots and others and to ensure that people actually are able to book spots that are available in MIQ.

With regard to the overall booking system, yes, we do keep that under constant review. The MIAS booking system—the managed isolation allocation system—that we have in place at the moment served us very well where supply and demand were relatively evenly matched or where demand was lower than supply. Where we get to a position—which we’re at again now—where there are far more people who want to come in than we have rooms available, it does create some inequities in terms of who’s able to access those rooms. So I am looking at a range of alternatives there to make sure—and that could be anything from a wait list system to a ballot system to a prioritised system. So we’re looking at a range of options for what we might be able to do in that particular space, because I recognise that there are a lot of people that do want to come into New Zealand at the moment. So we’re keeping that under constant review.

In terms of the bots, the feedback that I’ve had is that people cannot secure a booking through a bot, but they have been able to identify when vouchers are being released and alert people to the fact that vouchers are being released, which gives some people, if you like, a head start to be able to access them. That’s quite a difficult thing to be able to stop. So, therefore, one of the things I think that we will look to do, if we continue with the system as it is now, is make sure that we’re foreshadowing when we’re going to be releasing extra vouchers so that everyone gets a fair and equal opportunity at that.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of ACT, I’d like to reiterate what other members have said expressing our concern and condolences to our Anzac cousins across the Ditch and the way that they have had their way of life affected, and even some loss of life, due to this Delta variant. Prime Minister Morrison has described the Delta variant as a game-changer, and it certainly seems to have changed many of the parameters of COVID-19.

It seems that while we are enormously fortunate not to be in the place of the Australian states—or at least many of those states—right now, I think people will want to know what sort of a rethink our Government has had in light of the Delta strain and particularly, in relation to this ministerial statement, what sort of defences the New Zealand Government is putting in place to ensure that we don’t, despite suspending the travel bubble, end up with COVID and the Delta strain of it entering New Zealand. So I wonder if I could just first ask the Minister what sort of advice he received around the risk taken by saying that the situation is grave enough to suspend the travel bubble, but also having a week’s amnesty where people could return from Australia—or at least some parts of Australia—where Delta was circulating, or nearby to their location, with no apparent safeguards once they arrived in New Zealand.

We did put in place additional safeguards for people returning from Australia. One of the most obvious was that everybody coming back from Australia needed to have a negative COVID-19 test before they were able to come into the country. Some of those states in Australia, when we did that amnesty week, had no active cases in their community. So the risk was low, but the risk was growing. Subsequent events over the last week have demonstrated that that’s the case. We have also put, for Victoria, where there was a slightly elevated risk at that point, a requirement that people need to self-isolate on return and get another negative test once they’ve come back to New Zealand. So I think that there were appropriate risk mitigations in place.

In terms of the questions around the wider Delta variant, and the escalation of risk that comes from the Delta variant, that is undoubtedly true. It has changed the situation around COVID-19. We saw examples last year and early this year where contact tracing was able to contain COVID-19, both here and in Australia, in a way that the Delta variant draws into question whether those systems would be able to operate as effectively in the future if we saw a case making its way into the New Zealand community. So we would certainly draw on the lessons from that, and any future response that we may need to have here in New Zealand.

Our managed isolation facilities are among the tightest in the world. That is not to say that there’s no risk; there is absolutely risk there, and we do everything we can to drive that out and to stay vigilant. The work we have been doing around air ventilation systems, around staff training, around personal protective equipment, around vigorous monitoring, around vaccination of the border workforce—around all of those things—are all contributing to continuing to tighten up that system, but there is no such thing as no risk.

In light of our managed isolation system—and the Minister said it’s one of the tightest, although the Delta variant is changing the parameters of the virus—I wonder what advice he’s had about the effects of the Delta variant on the effectiveness of vaccination with respect to infection and transmission. Besides its effect on the usefulness of vaccination, the incubation time—in other words, the amount of time it takes for the Delta variant to incubate and become testable—what sort of advice has the Minister had on whether or not the current managed isolation and quarantine settings of having a wall of vaccination and testing three times in two weeks is adequate given the changed parameters he’s just talked about?

In terms of the overall effectiveness of vaccines, it’s still early days yet, but what we’re seeing around the world is that vaccination is still very effective against the Delta variant, although it could be slightly less effective than it is against some of the earlier variants of the virus. It still significantly reduces the chances of someone getting COVID-19, spreading COVID-19, and COVID-19 having a serious health effect on them, but it is, as I said, early days yet.

In terms of our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities, one of the things we will look at is where we do the testing. So we know Delta does seem to move faster, does seem to spread faster. We already, at the beginning of the year, as a result of some of the new variants we were seeing, introduced a day zero test for everyone coming into the country as a result of the fact that we know new variants are more transmissible and are moving faster. So we have already put that day zero test in. That hasn’t applied to people coming from Australia until recently. We’re looking at that. There’s another question about—day three is still a good time—whether the gap between day three and day 12 is too big a gap, whether there needs to be something in the middle. We will look at that, and that will include looking at whether other testing technologies could be used to increase the frequency of testing for people in MIQ. Haven’t made decisions on those yet, but they’re certainly being actively looked at.

How would the Delta variant change the Government’s response to an outbreak, in light of his comments that he’s just made about the possible inadequacy of contact tracing with a faster spreading variant? Does the Government have any new policy changes in respect to how it would respond to an outbreak in light of the Delta variant?

It would very much depend on the facts of each individual case. In every individual case that we’ve seen regarding COVID-19, since we started this process 18 months ago, every case has been different and every case has required a slightly different response. So I think some of the things that we would look to are: the nature of the contact—was the source of the person contracting the virus known? Those are all things that we’ve always looked at previously, but the answer to some of those questions might dictate a slightly different response.

Just finally, Australia, for the first year that we had MIQ, I recall, provided about 40 percent of all isolating passengers inbound. The Australian travel bubble did one thing: it freed up an enormous amount of MIQ space, and, for a short time, it seemed that the demand had been met and that people were relatively content with their ability to get into the country. Over the last two months, MPs have had an avalanche of complaints from people who say that MIQ is often booked as far away as November. And, as the Minister just said, once upon a time, supply and demand would match; now they’re clearly not, hence the problems with bots and so on. With the Australian travel bubble suspended, there is only going to be much greater demand for MIQ spots on top of the fact that it is already booked up for months. Many people find themselves in desperate situations, humanitarian and economic, because they can’t get through the border. Does the Government have any plans that it can tell us about to expand the level of MIQ space available?

I don’t have anything to announce on that today, but I can give the member reassurance that, yes, we are looking at overall MIQ capacity; what the options might be to increase that. Physical buildings are not the only part of that particular jigsaw puzzle; in fact, they are probably the easier part of the puzzle to solve. The workforce continues to be a challenge there. We’ve spread our Defence Force quite thinly across MIQ to help to run that, and we’re reaching the outer limits of what we can do there in terms of calling on the Defence Force to help, given their other commitments that they also have to fulfil. We have stretched our health workforce quite thinly as well, both in terms of the work we are doing around testing MIQ vaccination and asking them to continue to do everything the health system would normally do, whilst still doing those other things; recognising that the COVID-19 response around the rest of the world has often resulted in their health system stopping doing a whole lot of things that our health system continues to do every day. I think we are all grateful that out health system continues to perform, but we have to recognise that it is very, very stretched and that those are the sorts of things that are constraints we have to work through; they are not all insurmountable constraints, but they do take time to work through when we want to expand our MIQ capacity.

Does the Minister have a date he can tell the House when he will announce changes to MIQ policy for all those people stuck at the border who are waiting for that kind of information?

I think there are two things to that. One is around capacity. I don’t have a particular date in mind about that. It will take as long as it takes, but I can give the member—and, in fact, all those people who are waiting—assurance that we are working as quickly as we can to get those answers. The other is around the process to allocate those rooms that we do currently have available, and we are working very actively to look at whether there are ways to introduce more fairness into that system. The system works very fairly, as I said, where there is more supply than demand. It does create inequities in the position that we are in at the moment.

E te Pīka, otirā kia ora tātou e te Whare, tēnā koe e te Minita, whakarāhuingia tō tātou whenua i tēnei rā ki Ahitereiria, engari he pātai kē wāku hāngai tō ki a koe.

[Mr. Speaker, to the House, I acknowledge the Minister who restricted access to our country today from Australia, although I do have some questions that directly relate to you.]

One of the key reasons why there is so much risk from trans-Tasman travel at this time is our low vaccination rates. Can the Minister confirm what the current vaccination rate is for Māori?

What I can confirm is that around 9 percent of the vaccination doses delivered so far have gone to Māori New Zealanders. In terms of the age cohorts eligible, Māori have uptaken the opportunity to get a vaccine at a higher rate than other, non-Māori, New Zealanders have, and I thank them for that. One of the terrible health statistics that we have in our country is that Māori don’t live as long as non-Māori, and so as we’ve been working our way down through the age cohorts, fewer Māori have been present in those older age bands. That is something that we should not be satisfied about as a country; it’s something that we should be very concerned about. It is unacceptable that Māori don’t live as long as non-Māori New Zealanders. But that has had an impact on our vaccination stats.

The Government has already admitted that Māori are at most risk, so why haven’t we dealt with the issues before now, to ensure a greater level of protection for Māori?

We have been working very closely with Māori health providers, also with Pasifika health providers—another community that is at risk. In our sequencing framework, we prioritised those communities most at risk, including South Auckland, because we knew that there were higher concentrations of Māori there who were going to be more at risk should COVID-19 come into the country, and actually were the most likely community to see that kind of incursion in the event that that had happened. So we have prioritised that. As I said, the statistics are encouraging, in that they would show that there isn’t the level of hesitancy in Māori communities that some people have been claiming that there is. I’m very heartened by that, but I have also been making it clear to the DHBs that we expect to see a good focus on equity in the ongoing roll-out of the vaccination.

Why aren’t we seeing a higher vaccination rate for Māori in those age groups that you have mentioned, or Pasifika peoples, if we are most at risk when unvaccinated; and does the current vaccine protect us from the Delta variant?

In answer to the last part of the question, in terms of protection from the Delta variant, yes it does protect us from the Delta variant. Vaccination protects us very well from all the variants of the virus. There’s some questions about whether the Delta variant has an impact on the overall level of effectiveness, but it would be at the margins. The vaccines are still proving to be very effective, and particularly the Pfizer vaccines—the mRNA vaccines—are still proving to be very effective against the variants of the virus. In terms of the overall rates of Māori and Pacific vaccination, and why we are seeing them sitting at around that 9 percent mark when the proportion of the population is higher, it is because of the age profile of Māori and Pacific New Zealanders—they’re a younger population. As I’ve said before, I don’t think any of us should feel particularly proud of the fact that Māori and Pacific people don’t live as long as other New Zealanders. That is something that our health system as a whole needs to grapple with.

The other priority groups at the beginning have been our border workforce, people who are living in aged residential care facilities, and so on. Again, we have seen a lower representation of Māori within those groups.

Finally, was the decision to open up quarantine-free travel with Australia premature; and shouldn’t the Government prioritise keeping our borders closed, given we have already seen so many problems as a result?

I think it’s a fair question. I don’t think it was premature at the time, but what I’ve learnt with COVID-19 over this last year and a half is that the facts change all the time. Things are a bit different now than they were back in April when we opened the trans-Tasman bubble, and the Australians themselves have acknowledged that too. The Delta variant has changed a lot around COVID-19—it’s certainly changed a lot for them. The New South Wales contact tracing system performed remarkably well in the earlier phase of COVID-19, but really struggled with the Delta variant, and what they’re seeing now is partly as a result of that. So I think things have changed, which is why we’ve seen the suspension.