“Once again the Government is long on self-congratulation but late on delivery with its announcement of a travel bubble with Australia, but Jacinda Ardern couldn’t treat us like lucky little prisoners any longer,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“In an extraordinary admission today COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said each country would be making decisions unilaterally. In other words, there is no bubble, New Zealand will just start behaving like an Australian state but six months late.

“Today’s announcement incidentally aligns with the policies ACT has been espousing for months – all of them in our COVID Response Plan 2.0.

“For the Prime Minister to get up today and talk about ‘green zones’ at airports like she discovered something new and deserved a Nobel Prize for it is galling in the extreme.

“Holding up a traffic light system on a sheet of A3 paper like the one epidemiologist Professors Michael Baker and Nick Wilson mooted months ago is also outrageous.

“It’s been obvious that all these steps were the way forward since New South Wales introduced them in October.

“We know the bubble will work and it will improve the lives of countless New Zealanders and Australians. It’s how the Australian states have been working for months and there is no excuse for New Zealand being so late to join.”

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