Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is managing our borders to protect Australian lives and livelihoods? Will the minister outline how the Morrison government is working to safely reopen our nation to the world following the reopening of travel from New Zealand?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Herbert. He's a champion for Townsville. He wants to make sure that the tourism industry there can get back on its feet as quickly as possible and so do the Morrison government. We want to make sure that we can fight this virus, and we're doing that. We want to make sure that we can help small businesses and families recover in the best way possible from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We recognise that, in particular, the aviation sector and the tourism sector are under enormous pressure. We know that, since March of this year, up until 25 October, total air arrivals into Australia had decreased by around 98.6 per cent. It is phenomenal when you compare it with this time last year. Outbound numbers have gone down by about 97.7 per cent. So there is devastation within that sector, and we're working day and night to make sure that we can help. We have an arrangement where we're able to facilitate quarantine-free travel from New Zealand to Australia. As at yesterday, there have been 1,665 passengers who have travelled into Australia on 17 green-lane flights from New Zealand since that scheme was put in place on the 16th of this month. And we look forward to New Zealand opening up to Australian travellers.

We've also done a lot of work with Sydney airport and with other airports, and I caught up with airline CEOs only a week or so ago. We are planning for once we can get back into a normalised arrangement. I want to make sure that, if a vaccine or treatment comes in tomorrow and we can see passenger numbers increase dramatically over a short period of time, we have put the work in place to facilitate that ramping-up as quickly as possible. I want to say thank you to the ABF commissioner and all the senior staff and those that have been involved in negotiations with the airports and the airlines. Their work is incredibly important because thousands of jobs hinge on the success of that industry.

We have, as the Prime Minister has spoken about, looked at, if there is a successful arrangement with New Zealand, expanding out the green-lane arrangement to include Pacific neighbours like Fiji and the Cook Islands, and we've had preliminary discussions with neighbours such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea to explore those possible green-lane arrangements. We'll continue that work because it's important that we, as a government, not only work hard to fight this virus to protect Australians but to make sure that we can help these industries recover as quickly as possible. That is exactly what we're doing, working in very close collaboration with the airlines and with the aviation sector. Thanks for your interest.