TRAVEL BUBBLE POSITIVE FOR NZ SUPERCARS ROUND

Today’s travel bubble announcement made by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardernis is a great sign for the scheduled Supercars Championship round in New Zealand.

For several months Australia has been open to travellers from New Zealand, albeit with minor interruptions after COVID-19 outbreaks in Auckland. However, from April 18, New Zealand will reciprocate that arrangement by re-opening its border to Australia.

Despite the Brisbane outbreak that saw Supercar teams temporary scramble out of Queensland last week leading to the rescheduling of the Symmons Plains round, things look positive with a huge step forward for the planned Supercars round over the ditch in November.

Once the border re-opens, New Zealand will implement a graded three-tier border system to allow quarantine-less travel for Australian’s with each state graded on its own depending on COVID-19 breakouts, rather than the whole nation.

“Just as we have our alert level settings for managing cases in New Zealand, we will now have a framework for managing an outbreak in Australia,” said Ardernis.

“In many ways we will treat Australia as a region of our own when making decisions on restrictions albeit one with the complication of multiple internal borders.

“Once we know about a case in Australia, we will have three possible responses when it comes to flights and access to our border and we’ve captured these with a framework based on continue, pause or suspend.”

Travel bubble positive for New Zealand Supercars round – Image: InSyde Media

The NZ Prime Minister explained the simple three-tier system will be clear to everyone who plans to travel into New Zealand at any given time.

“We’ve set out the types of scenarios that could lead to each response,” she said. “They broadly follow the kinds of decisions that you’d see if there was a case here.

“For instance, if a case is found that is quite clearly linked to a border worker in a quarantine facility and is well contained, you’d likely see travel continue in the same way as you would see life continue if that happened here in New Zealand.

“If, however, a case was found that was not clearly linked to the border and the (Australian) state responded by a short lockdown to identify more information. We’d likely pause flights from that state in the same way we would stop travel into and out of a region in New Zealand if we’re going into a short lockdown.

“If we saw multiple cases of unknown origin, we would likely suspend flights for a set period of time.”

These new more relaxed state by state rules are a positive step for the likelihood of the NZ Supercars round at either Hampton Downs or Pukekohe Park currently scheduled to take place in November.

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