Whanganui welcomes potential travel bubbles with Australia and Cook Islands

Heavy machine operator Jamie Ballantyne usually spends two weeks per month working in Australia. Photo / Supplied

Whanganui people have welcomed the news that travel bubbles with Australia and the Cooks Islands will soon open up.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday that Cabinet had agreed, in principle, on establishing a quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia that would be up and running in the first quarter of 2020. There will be a further announcement in the New Year.

Late last week the Government also announced plans for a travel bubble with the Cook Islands, one of the few countries in the world to remain completely Covid-19 free. Like Australia, the Cook Islands bubble is set to begin in the first quarter of 2021.

Whanganui East resident Jamie Ballantyne is a heavy machine operator in a mine near Moranbah in Queensland and, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, he was working on a "week on week off" schedule between New Zealand and Australia.

Ballantyne said he had spent a month in quarantine facilities in 2020 and would welcome a transtasman bubble as soon as a "concrete plan was in place".

"In New Zealand quarantine you can exercise and go outside a bit, but when I was quarantining in Brisbane I wasn't allowed to open a window and I wasn't allowed outside the room," Ballantyne said.

"You rearrange the furniture a dozen times, and I had no interaction with anybody for two weeks. It was just me, being weird. There was a construction site across the road and I just sat in my underwear watching them.

"In saying that, isolation is easier on your own. I'd hate to do it as a couple, and I know that people with kids struggle with the longevity of it."

Ballantyne said he was planning on being back in Whanganui for the next three months, otherwise the cost of quarantine upon entry to New Zealand would have been "three or four grand".

An Air New Zealand flight departs for Sydney from Auckland in October. Photo / Supplied

At present, people who return from overseas must pay $3100 for their two-week isolation if they are staying in New Zealand for less than three months. It costs $950 for each additional adult and $475 for each additional child aged between 3-17 years who are sharing that room.

"I'm pretty sure that once they've proved that [the bubble] will work, flights will go back to sort-of normal," Ballantyne said.

"There are a lot of people like me who work over in Australia, and I meet heaps of miners from Huntly and down south in transit."

Melissa Butters, who was born and raised in Whanganui, is now based in Melbourne where she works as a photographer.

She said the cost of quarantining in New Zealand has made it impossible for her to return home to visit family, but she would be "on the first flight back" if a bubble was formed.

"I had flights booked for my birthday in April, and to see my brother, his pregnant wife and my two-year-old nephew," Butters said.

"I'm not sure if a bubble should have happened sooner, but things like Covid-19 are crazy and beyond our control. I think Jacinda has made some really good choices, and I'm definitely looking forward to getting back.

"My Grandma is in aged care in Castlecliff at the moment as well, so it's been pretty concerning not knowing when I'll get to see her again."

The cost of quarantining in New Zealand wasn't financially feasible for a lot of people, Butters said.

"That's including myself, and it's the same when you go back over [to Australia] again.

"My family were really pushing for me to come back, but it's an extra four weeks off work just with the isolation. I would have had to stay for the three months and try and find work or something.

"I guess I've just taken it for granted my entire life that I can just come home whenever I wanted. It was quite devastating knowing that I couldn't, and if I did come back not knowing if my partner could come as well."

The $3100 quarantine fee is preventing Melissa Butters from returning to Whanganui to visit family. Photo / Supplied

Whanganui Cook Island Community chairman Nga Apai said it was "a bit disappointing" that a bubble between New Zealand and the Cook Islands hadn't happened "at least two months ago".

"Tourism is the bread and butter there, and the Pasifika region, not just the Cook Islands, should have been opened up in October," Apai said.

"I know that some of our people who have gone back to Raro to celebrate Christmas and things like that, but they'll still have to find the $3000 when they come back into New Zealand.

"Our people struggle with the currency in New Zealand at the best of times, and it takes a long time to save that amount. Families who would love to go back together have only been able to send one person back."

Some of the Cook Islands community had lost loved ones over the past 12 months, Apai said, and this was the time of year when it was important to visit family and friends at home.

"The island way of life is surviving, but this whole thing could have been handled better."

Whanganui and Partners visitor industries lead Paul Chaplow said Australia was Whanganui's biggest market in terms of international tourism.

"Data from our i-Site shows Australians made up 21.4 per cent of international visitors to the site in 2019," Chaplow said.

"We know lots of Australian travellers have been interested in visiting New Zealand 'one day' but many have put us further down their wish list in favour of other destinations.

"Travel restrictions mean those Australians are now going to turn to New Zealand for their holidays abroad, and may spend longer here."

More visitors from Australia should help offset some of the loss of international visitors from other markets, Chaplow said.

"We are mindful of the fact international visitors make up about 20 per cent of our visitor numbers over summer, so we are doing all we can to ensure domestic travellers know what a great place Whanganui is to visit."