US, Europe off travel agenda

US, Europe off travel agenda

FEDERAL Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham has poured cold water on any near-term resumption of travel to the US & Europe, yesterday saying “the prospects of opening up widespread travel with higher risk countries will remain very reliant on effective vaccination or other major breakthroughs in the management of COVID”.

Birmingham’s comments were echoed on TV this morning by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who remarked that “you only need to look at what’s happening in Europe at the moment where they’re going through a horrific further wave of COVID-19 and of course we’ve got to be extremely careful about that”.

Closer to home, Morrison noted the pending opening up of travel from NZ to Australia this Fri, and confirmed he had been in discussions with Pacific leaders.

“They’re keen but we also want to ensure that we get no COVID transmission into those Pacific Island communities, their health systems are different and we’ve got to be very careful about that risk,” Morrison said.

He also said there had been “good discussions” with places like South Korea, Singapore and Japan, but added “I think that’s a bit further off”.

Yesterday’s Sun Herald quoted Birmingham suggesting there could be a full travel bubble with NZ by the end of the year, which would then be used as a blueprint for opening up to other countries in the Pacific and within Asia.

“Our arrangement with NZ will provide a blueprint to prove the model of how we run safe corridors – green lanes of international visitors coming in and out of Australia – and whether this can be extended to any other similarly low risk countries down the track,” he said.

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Source: traveldaily