New Zealand's border restrictions are being eased early next year.
From January 17, fully vaccinated New Zealanders who test negative before departure will be able to travel from Australia without going into MIQ but doing a week's self-isolation instead.
And from February 13, they can arrive from all other countries on the same basis.
Hipkins told Checkpoint it is “a reasonably encompassing definition” of those who can enter New Zealand without MIQ from the dates announced today.
That means NZ citizens, permanent residents, dependent children and partners.
“In the case of the partners… if you've got a Kiwi citizen as your partner, they're able to come in across the border through MIQ now if they can secure a space, so they would be able to come in.”
“Barring something very unexpected and very, very bad, then yes, we want to go ahead with this. So even if we're seeing increased case numbers in New Zealand, we're not going to be tuning back to settings. One of our goals here is to keep moving forward.”
Hipkins said one of the reasons the reopening is being staggered is to keep the risk of spiking case numbers low.
There were 215 new community cases of Covid-19 reported on Wednesday.
