BRISBANE travel agency Helloworld Mt Ommaney is part of a group which today lost a formal legal challenge to Queensland’s ongoing border lockdown, claiming the closures continue to impose significant financial hardship on business.
The case kicked off in the High Court in Brisbane yesterday, amid criticism by NZ’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, who also blamed Australian state border closures for delaying the advent of a trans-Tasman travel bubble.
Speaking with Channel Nine’s Today program yesterday, Peters said the plan had “run into a roadblock of federalism”, conceding the travel bubble would likely be forced to “go at Australia’s speed”.
“We should not have states being held back by the slowest mover, let’s get going and let’s have a precedent here and I’m certain when we have all of the protocols sorted out, which can be done very quickly…we could be off,” Peters said.
“The performance of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania has been superior to New Zealand in may ways…I think we can have real confidence gong forward but you have to start somewhere and basically we are asking for the handbrake to come off but it needs to be organised out of Australia,” he added.
Peters also claimed states such as Tasmania were “ready to go tomorrow,” urging the start of direct flights as soon as possible.
Australia’s Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham echoed Peter’s the sentiments earlier today, telling ABC News that the longer states keep their respective borders shut, the more pain it will inflict on the struggling travel sector.
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Source: traveldaily