National leader Judith Collins has lashed Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for another trans-Tasman bubble delay.
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Judith Collins said Jacinda Ardern announcing an announcement on April 6 for the trans-Tasman bubble was just about as bad as Ive had seen from any Prime Minister.
Source: 1 NEWS
On Monday, Ardern announced she would nominate a bubble opening date on April 6 after another two weeks of behind-the-scenes work on allowing quarantine-free travel for Australians.
Collins, who has this month mounted a campaign to open the bubble at pace, criticised her Labour counterpart for her unpreparedness to act on her own long-held goal.
“The Prime Minister is immensely averse to actually making a decision,” she said.
Last month, Ardern walked away from a pre-Christmas pledge to open the bubble by the end of March.
New Zealand has now essentially co-opted Australia’s hotspot approach and will open to states individually when it believes it safe to do so.
Collins said Ardern’s prevarication was hurting Kiwi tourism.
“The prime minister’s announcement that at some stage we’ll have another announcement was almost a parody,” she said.
“It was almost Monty Python-esque. It was just about as bad as I’ve seen from any prime minister.
“This is just a holding announcement.
“If she said the first of April, I would have thought ‘yeah an April Fool’s Day joke’ and that’s exactly what it is.”