Australia news live: Scott Morrison announces royal commission into veteran suicides; New Zealand travel bubble opens

Cities across New Zealand are putting out the welcome mat for Australian arrivals.

From the air, arrivals to Wellington will be greeted with the words Welcome Whānau (Māori for family) painted in enormous letters next to the runways. Duty-free stores re-stocked shelves and rolled up the barriers, many opening for the first time in around a year.

At Auckland airport, a choir warmed up for a rendition of Welcome Home, by Dave Dobbyn, and families waited to greet new arrivals.

It was “a very significant day” for both countries, prime minister Jacinda Ardern said in an interview with Morning Report.

I don’t know anywhere else in the world that’s doing that, so it is a very big day and exciting for family and friends.

Despite that excitement, the bubble still represents a risk for New Zealand’s Covid-free haven – and a political risk for Ardern’s government. It has been greeted with trepidation from the wider New Zealand public, with polling finding only around half of New Zealanders, or 49%, were in favour of opening the trans-Tasman bubble.

The poll by Research New Zealand for RNZ surveyed a sample of 1,000 New Zealanders, and found 22 % of respondents were still on the fence about the bubble, and 28 % were against an opening.

Research NZ managing partner Emanuel Kalafatelis told RNZ that, given the positive media coverage of the bubble, he was “surprised” by the results. “We thought the support would be a lot higher,” he said.

The top concern for those against the bubble was the risk of Australians bringing Covid into the country, and that it would cause further lockdowns. The top two reasons for those in favour were catching up with friends and family, and economic reasons, given the bubble is expected to stimulate New Zealand’s tourism, hospitality and retail sectors.

Those tourism operators are cautiously optimistic. In March, Tourism New Zealand forecast that opening travel to Australians could allow tourism revenue to recover to 70% of pre-Covid levels, in a NZ$1bn boost to the New Zealand economy over the rest of the year.

But major campervan operator Tourism Holdings Limited told TVNZ that so far, many Australians have been “window shopping”, with searches up but not matched by an equivalent rise in bookings. Those may rise steadily: if initial flights are predominantly filled with reuniting families, subsequent arrivals could tilt more towards tourism.