Aust flight idea has wings

Business leaders back capital to Canberra route

Business leaders on both sides of the Tasman have issued a proposal to start flights between Wellington and Canberra in less than a month. The respective chambers of commerce yesterday invited people to register their interest in flights currently pencilled in for July 1 and 2.

Business leaders in both countries are touting a new route between the capitals as a trial for a full transtasman bubble.

They want the plan in place by July 1, but would need sign off by governments on both sides of the Tasman.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said he wanted transtasman travel to resume now but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been more reticent, describing September as a realistic date.

Yesterday it was announced there were no new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand for 13 days running.

There is still one active coronavirus case, director general of Health Ashley Bloomfield says.

Nearly 2560 Covid-19 tests were completed on Wednesday, bringing the total to 286,174 since the pandemic began.

Bloomfield said New Zealand was in a privileged and hard-won state with Covid-19 but internationally it’s a different story — the highest number of cases globally in one day was just three days ago, on June 1.

There have been around 380,000 deaths reported to the World Health Organisation.

“We are still very early in the evolution of this pandemic,” he said. “There are still many gaps in our knowledge.”

New Zealand is the envy of many countries, he said.

That’s due to the hard work and sacrifice of New Zealanders — but the country could not afford to act as if it was “all over globally” when really it had just started, Bloomfield said.

“We cannot afford to take our eye off the ball here.”

It’s anticipated that Cabinet will approve a shift to level 1 at its meeting on Monday, meaning the country will have very few restrictions in place as early as Wednesday, June 10.