Ardern told Sunrise she would take an "evidence and research" based approach so she "feels confident that it's the right decision for New Zealand" before confirming a bubble.
"We like you visiting us, it's very important to us."
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told 2GB today she was keen to look into a travel arrangement with New Zealand.
"I'm more than happy to be the first state that welcomes Kiwis," Berejiklian said.
"But I hope they will also welcome people from our state back, I hope it's reciprocal."
In another morning interview, Ardern told Today that New Zealand had "always been open to" arrangements with states handling coronavirus well.
"There have been a number of states that have had huge success with Covid and have had status that has meant that, yes, that could be a possibility," Ardern said.
However, she put the ball back in Australia's court, saying it had
changed its position.
"Previously, there was a bit of a view that you wanted movement between states before you would be looking to New Zealand," she said.
"Now the proposal from Australia has been to move to a hot spot regime.
"What we will need to work through is what the definition of a hot spot really means. At what point will Australia say, 'That's an area we will put up a bit of a border around and won't have travel to'?
"That will determine whether or not in our minds that will be sufficient just to keep everybody safe."
A number of states had had "huge success with Covid", she said.
"So much of that comes down to the decisions that Australia chooses to make going into the future.
"What you can see is that we do want to make it work. We want it to be safe. We want everyone to be comfortable with it and know that we are safeguarding our own strategies as we do it."
She told Today she had "zero tolerance" for cases in New Zealand and that she stood by her decision to "go hard, go early".
"It meant we lifted our restrictions sooner than many others. We got our open economy back and our death rate was low. Ultimately what is an economy without healthy people?
"That's been the basis of a lot of our decisions."
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters previously said a transtasman travel bubble could "open up next week" if Australia can guarantee they'd "send safety to our country, not danger".
Peters said it was his view a transtasman bubble would happen "a lot more quickly than people think" and "much sooner than Christmas".
"If the Australians could give us a guarantee about their protocols and send safety to our country, not danger we could open next week - but we need that guarantee."
Work on the prospect of allowing travel between parts of both countries that were not affected by Covid-19 - dubbed a "hotspot arrangement" - has been ongoing despite Auckland's second outbreak.
